IvIBRA.RY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California. 

Class 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/cultureofjusticeOOduborich 


THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 


THE  CULTURE   OF 

JUSTICE 


yi  f/lode  of  Moral  Education 
and  of  Social  Reform 


By  PATTERSON  Du  BOIS 

Author  of    "The   Point  of   Contact  in   Teaching," 

"Beckonings   from   Little    Hands,"    **The 

Natural  Way  in  Moral  Training,"  etc. 


Render  unto  Ccesar  the  things 
that  are  Ccesar^s. — ^esus. 


True  yustice  between  man  and  man, 
Zzekiel  18:8, 


NEW  YORK 

Dodd,   Mead  and  Company 

1907 


6£N£HAL 

Copyright,    1907, 
By  DoDD,   Mead  and  Company 

Published  April,    1907 


PUBLISHER'S  PREFACE 

This  book  is  the  natural  sequence  and 
consummation  of  its  three  predeces- 
sors— **Beckonings  from  Little  Hands," 
**The  Point  of  Contact  in  Teaching," 
and  **Fireside  Child  Study."  In  all  these 
works  we  see  the  same  motif,  but  it 
remains  for  the  present  volume  to  make 
clear  the  meaning  and  importance  of 
Justice  itself  as  the  bottom  moral  and 
social  principle.  The  book  is  thus  edu- 
cational and  sociological.  It  concerns 
the  social  reformer  and  the  jurist  as  well 
as  the  parent,  teacher,  minister,  and  busi- 
ness man.  Its  reach  is  from  the  cradle 
to  the  market  or  to  the  school,  bar,  and 
pulpit — alike  professional  and  popular. 


1.74092 


^  OF  THE     "^ 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


PREFACE 


This  little  book  Is  the  amplification  of  an 
address  delivered  under  the  auspices  of 
the  Union  Theological  Seminary  at  the 
opening  of  the  Extension  Courses  for 
Lay  Students  In  the  autumn  of  1906. 

Prior  to  this  I  had  presented  one  phase 
and  another  of  the  subject  as  lectures  or 
talks  before  pedagogical,  clerical,  and 
women's  clubs,  or  special  audiences, 
under  such  titles  as  **The  Appeal  of 
Justice''  and  **The  Place  of  Justice  In 
Education." 

The  great  moral  awakening  In  civic 
and  In  business  life,  the  contagious  zeal 
for  social  reform,  the  growing  conscious- 
ness of  definite  educational  Ideals,  the 
movement  toward  child  emancipation, 
the  criticism  of  court  procedure,  the  as- 
cendancy of  arbitration  and  peace  prin- 
ciples— these  on  the  one  hand;  on  the 


vm  PREFACE 

Other  hand,  the  menace  to  the  integrity 
of  the  home  and  the  family,  the  pas- 
sionate greed,  the  gambling  habit,  the 
lawless  vengeance,  and  the  sluggishness 
of  the  Church  to  lead  In  moral-social  re- 
form— all  these  things  Indicate  that  the 
time  Is  ripe  for  an  effort  toward  the  end 
which  this  discussion  has  In  view. 

That  most  of  our  social  misery  Is  at 
bottom  rooted  In  human  Injustice  has 
long  been  my  Intensifying  conviction. 
That  the  Improvement  of  moral  condi- 
tions rests  upon  a  fuller  and  more 
definite  conception  of  Justice  as  the  basal 
and  the  virile  virtue  Is  to  me  equally 
clear. 

Such  Is  the  real  purport  of  the  work, 
however  Inadequate  or  faulty  Its  presen- 
tation. The  first  part  Is  devoted  more 
specifically  to  principles  or  theory,  the 
second  part  to  practice  or  application; 
the  latter  Includes  diverse  Illustration 
and  three  very  Important  topics.  In  which 
Justice  or  Equity  Is  the  common  factor. 

That  some  issues  In  the  argument  will 


PREFACE  IX 

seem  unconventional  and  extreme  to  not 
a  few  readers  is  to  be  expected.  The 
main  thing  is  that  the  true  idea  of  Jus- 
tice shall  become  our  controlling  moral 
habit  of  mind  and  regulate  our  complex 
human  relations — our  rights  and  duties. 
Patterson  Du  Bois. 


CONTENTS 

THEORY 

I 
A  Right  Start  j 

II 
Our  Duty  to  Our  Powers  28 

III 
Genesis    of    the    Sense    of    Justice    and 

OF  Morality  36 

IV 
Meaning  and  Significance  of  Justice  53 

V 

Universality  and  Persistence  of  the  Sense 

OF  Justice  90 

VI 

Extension   and    Further    Elucidation   of 

THE  Principle  120 

APPLICATION 

VII 
Specimen  Applications  159 

VIII 
Loyalty  vs.   Obedience  198 

IX 

Failure  and  Immorality  of  Corporal  Pun- 
ishment 209 
X 
Money  as  a  Means  of  Moral  Training     228 

Index  273 


PART  FIRST 

M 

THEORY 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 


A  RIGHT  START 

A  CHILD  of  ten,  returning  from  school 
one  day,  naively  submitted  to  the  court 
of  the  home  circle  this  case  of  class-room 
ethics:  "The  teacher  makes  the  girls 
pick  up  all  the  papers  from  the  floor 
about  their  own  desks;  and  sometimes 
the  children  say,  *Those  are  not  my 
papers ;'  but  she  says  they  must  pick  them 
up  just  the  same."  Then  with  a  child's 
instinctive  directness  she  added,  **I 
should  think  it  would  be  better  not  to 
let  the  papers  get  on  the  floor." 

This  plea  of  the  children,  that  the 
papers  were  not  theirs,  was  the  appeal 
to  Justice — the  earliest  born  and  the 
most  persistent  form  of  the  moral  sense. 
The  little  maid  simply  shifted  the  prob- 
lem   back    from     cure   to   prevention. 


/* 


4  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

What  she  saw  in  a  twinkling,  the  brain 
of  science  and  the  heart  of  philanthropy 
have  been  gradually  coming  to  see 
through  the  centuries.  The  world  is  a 
school-room  littered  with  disorder  and 
misery.  Shall  we  spend  ourselves  merely 
trying  to  relieve  it?  or  shall  we  work 
to  prevent  it?  This  is  the  problem.  Can 
rOve  alone  solve  it?  ^ 

Love  is  the  great  dynamic  of  the  soul.  ^ 
But  human  love  has  little  or  no  essential 
wisdom,  no  selective  self-control.  It  is 
unengineered  steam,  the  electric  potential 
of  the  air.  It  may  caress  a  child  into 
saintship  or  it  may  nag  and  punish  him 
Into  criminal  estrangement.  It  may  lift 
the  poor  Into  self-respect  and  cheerful 
comfort,  or  It  may  pauperise  them  into 
degradation  and  despair.  Love  needs  a 
regulator.  It  needs  the  judgment  of 
Justice. 
As  we  shall  see  later,  Justice  Is  the  full- 
est expression  of  the  right  relation  of 
man  to  man.  No  other  virtue  Is  thus 
complete.     It  gives  to  all  other  virtues 


A    RIGHT    START  5 

their  highest  efficiency.  To  Love,  it  is 
the  balance-wheel,  the  pendulum,  the 
regulator,  the  governor,  the  rudder,  the 
far-sighted  lookout,  the  premier. 

Without  a  sense  of  justice  there  is  no 
sound  moral  sense.  Exactly  what  justice 
means  and  why  it  is  the  essence  of  moral 
living  we  shall  see  later.  That  the 
Christian  or  the  Jew  needs  all  the  moral- 
ity that  he  can  get  is  not  debatable. 
That  the  culture  of  justice  is  the  shortest 
and  indeed  the  only  sure  road  to  it  is 
the  present  proposition. 

All  through  the  ages  and  now  on  all 
sides  of  us  we  find  religious  men  failing 
in  morals.  They  do  not  appear  to  ap- 
preciate the  infinite  obligation  of  render- 
ing to  every  man  his  own  or  of  enabling 
each  to  contribute  his  fullest  strength  to 
the  common  good.  They  have  not 
brought  conscience  under  the  law  of  jus- 
tice. The  result  is,  social  conditions  as 
we  see  them  among  all  sorts  and  condi- 
tions of  men. 

Some  Christians  are  afraid  to  be  moral 


6  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

lest  they  be  **merely"  moral.  On  this 
point  also  more  later.  But  just  this  word 
now:  When  the  Master  Teacher  told 
men  that  they  must  render  unto  Caesar 
the  things  that  are  Caesar's  and  unto 
God  the  things  that  are  God's,  he  gave 
them  to  understand  that  there  is  a  moral 
obligation  of  man  to  man  as  well  as  a 
religious  obligation  of  man  to  God. 
These  two  things  are  at  bottom  one,  but 
the  finite  mind  will  do  well  to  think  of 
them,  must  so  do  indeed,  as  practically 
two.  Christianity  includes  morality, 
sure  enough,  but  human  relations  are  so 
complex  that  it  is  worth  while — neces- 
sary, in  fact — to  think  of  morals  as 
morals,  however  strongly  we  hold  that 
being  a  Christian  includes  all. 

That  ethical  philosophising  alone  will 
not  produce  moral  living  is  patent  and 
proved.  But  that  a  man  is  as  He  **think- 
eth  in  his  heart"  is  a  fact*  as  old  as 
Sacred  Writ.  Social  life,  in.  our  day  at 
least,  is  too  intricate  a  thing  to  be 
morally  lived  without  a  clear,  control- 


A   RIGHT   START  7 

ling  principle  of  which  the  conscience  is 
always  conscious.  If  such  a  principle 
exist  as  a  named  virtue,  the  mind  ought 
to  be  able  to  define  it  in  words  which,  if 
not  mathematical,  should  at  least  give  a 
specific  set  to  one's  thinking,  feeling,  and 
willing.  The  "heart"  means  all  this: 
to  think  in  one's  heart  is  to  think  things 
through  to  action. 

Is  there  such  a  guiding  principle,  senti- 
ment, or  ideal  virtue  ?  It  is  the  function 
of  this  book  to  show  in  some  measure 
that  there  is,  and  that  it  is  Justice. 
Every  one  has  a  feeling  for  justice  as  the 
moral-social  specific.  But  with  very  few 
has  it  become  the  controlling  ethical 
duty  in  their  lives.  It  has  never  been  de- 
fined as  a  centre  of  the  thinking  in  the 
heart.  We  feel  for  Justice  as  the 
heathen  gropes  for  God — knowing  him 
only  from  afar  and  in  the  twilight  mist. 

The  popular  mind,  largely  affected  by 
juridical  phrase,  has  come  to  associate 
the  idea  of  justice  with  the  idea  of  retri- 
bution or  punishment,  or  at  least  with 


8  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

legal  victory.  The  average  man  sup- 
poses that  he  can  get  justice  without 
equity,  or  worse  still,  that  if  he  is  legal 
he  is  just!  He  never  thinks  of  justice  as 
the  great  formative  agency  for  the  de- 
velopment of  the  individual.  He  does 
not  see  it  as  a  co-operative  and  reciprocal 
rendering,  each  to  each,  of  that  which 
is  his  own  and  in  the  interest  of  the  high- 
est common  good.  But  of  this  matter  of 
definition  more  later. 

No  one  idea  more  dominates  the  atti- 
tude of  loving  and  conscientious  parents 
than  that  of  correction  and  especially 
punishment;  and  still  further,  that  the 
effectiveness  of  punishment  depends 
chiefly  upon  its  severity.  The  same  is 
true  of  the  school  and  the  state.  Under 
the  strictly  just  habit  of  mind  we  should 
so  study  to  render  unto  every  one  his 
own  that  punishment  is  hardly  to  be 
thought  of,  or  thought  of  only  as  a  con- 
sequence of  our  own  dereliction. 

Perhaps   the  measure  of   punishment 
necessary  to  the  common  good  is   the 


A   RIGHT   START  9 

measure  of  our  ignorance  and  unwisdom 
in  dealing  first  with  children  and  later 
with  men.  In  setting  a  penal  pace  for 
ourselves  as  guardians  of  children,  how- 
ever, let  us  cease  to  quote  the  dealings  of 
God  with  the  race,  for  only  in  the  most 
limited  sense  can  we  compare  ourselves 
with  God.  And  so  of  justice;  it  is  here 
discussed  purely  as  a  matter  of  morals 
or  human  relations.  It  demands  that  we 
begin  right  rather  than  wait  for  wrongs 
to  need  correcting. 

Possibly  the  trouble  lies  just  here:  we 
pity  our  neighbour  enough  to  pull  him 
out  of  the  mire,  but  we  do  not  love  him 
enough  to  think  justice  for  him.  There- 
fore we  make  no  effort  to  prevent  his 
falling  into  the  pit  in  the  first  place, 
which  is  what  a  truly  just  habit  of  mind 
would  order.  In  fact,  so  long  as  we  al- 
low the  pitfall  to  remain  we  cannot  hope 
for  his  safety.  If  it  remain,  it  does  so 
because  we  have  not  yet  acquired  the  just 
habit  of  loving  our  neighbour  as  we 
ought  to  love  ourselves,  as  contributors 


lo  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

to  and  sharers  In  the  common  good.  We 
do  not  see  the  whole  relation  in  which 
we  stand  in  an  infinite  reciprocity.  We 
need  the  eye  of  justice  looking  back- 
ward as  well  as  forward. 

As  that  great  modern  prophet,  Victor 
Hugo,  has  put  it:^ 

*'This  soul  is  full  of  darkness  and  sin 
is  committed ;  but  the  guilty  person  is  not 
the  man  who  commits  the  sin,  but  he  who 
produces  the  darkness."  Let  us  say  who 
permits  the  darkness. 

A  child  of  six  saw  these  truths  no  less 
directly.  She  had  been  telling  her  father 
and  mother  about  an  untrained  school- 
mate from  a  Christian,  well-to-do  home. 
**How  would  you  like  to  have  a  child  like 
that?"  she  said;  **you  would  teach  her, 
wouldn't  you?"  This  showed  that  with 
all  her  disapprobation  of  such  an  ob- 
jectionable classmate  she  still  looked  fuir. 
ther  back  to  causes  and  threw  J^lame  on 
the  girl's  parents.  This  was  the  Spartan 
law. 

*  "Les  Miserables." 


A   RIGHT    START  il 

Another  child,  a  vigorous-minded  girl 
of  ten,  commenting  on  the  conduct  of 
certain  companions,  said  it  made  her 
mad — **mad  not  at  the  children,  but  at 
their  mothers."  The  average  parent 
might  think  that  those  mothers  had  not 
punished  enough;  but  the  just  mind 
might  as  fairly  think  that  they  had 
punished  too  much — or  relied  too 
greatly  on  treatment  after  instead  of  be- 
fore the  deed. 

Let  us  start  right     We  have  had  a 
hand  in  producing  the  darkness  that  has 
permitted  and   produced  misery  in   all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men — and  only 
too  often  in  the  very  name  of  love.    Us- 
ually we  can  look  for  the  first  causes  in 
an  unjust  home  life.    The  effects  are  evi- 
dent in  the  larger  social  life. 
The  quickest  way  to  atone  for  all  this 
nd  to  make  a  new  start  is  to  train  the 
hildren   into  the  unfailing  method  of 
Love's  justice  by  practising  it  ourselves. 
It  is  their  natural  method,  as  we  have 
seen  in  a  few  cited  instances.     But  they 


12  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

need  us  to  steady  them  in  it.  We  shall 
see  the  full  meaning  of  this  as  we  pro- 
ceed. 

As  a  feeling,  Love  is  the  greatest  of  all 
impelling  powers.  But  love  is  not  a 
prescribed  method  or  a  plan.  Lacking 
wisdom,  it  may  do  unlovely,  because  un- 
just, things,  without  seeing  their  unlove- 
liness.  The  mother  punishes  her  child 
in  love,  she  says.  But  if  she  has  not 
heard  the  child's  case  and  has  igno- 
rantly  hurt  the  innocent,  she  has  done  an 
unjust  and  therefore  an  unlovely  thing. 
And  yet  no  one  dare  say  she  does  not  love 
her  child. 

Not  so  when  Love  takes  Justice  for  her 
wisdom  and  makes  it  her  unfailing  way. 
This  enlists  the  nobler  faculties  of  mind 
— calls  out  the  imagination  as  inter- 
preter, demands  the  suspended  and  de- 
liberating judgment,  holds  self-interest 
and  personal  irritation  in  check,  and 
opens  the  vision  to  the  universal  good. 
Justice  is  impossible  to  mental  indolence. 
It  develops  that  courage  which  is  neces- 


A   RIGHT   START  13 

sary  to  face  facts  and  that  self-control 
which  is  essential  to  their  valuation.  It 
is  the  only  safe  administrator  of  the  per- 
fect law  of  individual  liberty,  and  the 
guarantor  of  peace,  unity,  and  brother- 
hood. 

As  a  habit  of  thought,  justice  begins 
and  must  show  itself  as  a  moral  funda- 
ment in  the  family.  Many  an  able  jurist 
finds  it  easier  to  be  just  on  the  bench  than 
at  the  family  fireside — even  though  he 
has  not  realised  it.  If,  as  we  shall  see 
later,  the  sense  of  justice  develops  in 
early  childhood,  it  is  in  the  home  that  it 
is  either  weakened  or  strengthened  with 
the  days. 

In  a  true  family  life,  uncorrupted,  in- 
corruptible, solidified  by  the  loyalty  of  a 
just  confidence,  mutual  aid  and  affec- 
tionate devotion — in  this  lies  the  hope  of 
the  nation  and  of  the  individual.  Here 
virtue  begins  to  be  loved,  vice  to  be  ab- 
horred. Here  God  first  reveals  himself 
to  the  upreaching  souL 

I  cannot  forbear  quoting  a  few  apt  sen- 


14  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

tences  from  Dr.  Washington  Gladden. 
**A11  the  economic  operations  of  the  com- 
munity are  an  evolution  from  the  life  of 
the  pioneer  family.  All  the  movements 
which  tend  to  socialise  the  community — 
the  education,  the  moral  and  religious 
training — originate  in  the  family.  These 
functions  are  now  largely  handed  over 
to  other  agencies.  But  the  family  is  not 
released  from  responsibility  for  them. 
The  family  must  still  remain  the  vitalis- 
ing, energising  force,  in  them  and  be- 
hind them  all.  All  this  work  of  protec- 
tion, production,  education  must  find  its 
spring  and  its  impulse  in  the  home.  The 
capital  defect  of  our  modern  society  is 
in  the  tendency  of  the  family  to  shirk 
these  primary  social  functions  and  pass 
them  over  to  other  agencies." 

For  society's  sake,  for  the  individual's 
sake,  let  us  maintain  the  integrity  of  the 
family.  The  signs  of  family  and  home 
degeneracy  are  more  serious  than  those 
of  physical  degeneracy  and  crime.  It  is 
in  the  home  that  Love  needs  the  highest 


A  RIGHT   START  15 

Wisdom — the  wisdom  of  true  justice.  It 
is  in  the  home  that  we  handle  first  causes. 
Here  justice  should  begin  to  be  preven- 
tive, formative,  and  constructive  rather 
than  wait  for  the  later  public  justice  of 
correction,  retribution,  and  repression. 


II 

OUR  DUTY  TO  OUR  POWERS 

Too  long  have  theology  and  the  Church 
permitted  the  world  to  ask  why  *'con- 
version''  or  the  profession  of  Christian- 
ity has  not  produced  a  finer  moral  dis- 
cernment as  well  as  a  higher  moral  cour- 
age in  the  average  Christian. 

The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  We  are 
endowed  with  capabilities  or  personal 
powers  which  have  to  be  trained  into  a 
harmonious  adjustment  with  a  complex 
humanly  organised  society. 

This  is  a  matter  of  morals,  however 
essentially  Christian  morals  be  rooted  in 
religion.  And  it  is  with  moral  rela- 
tions— social  human  relations  only — 
that  we  are  now  concerned.  More  spe- 
cifically, it  is  with  justice  as  the  modal 
base  of  human  relations  that  we  are  en- 


OUR    DUTY   TO    OUR    POWERS  17 

deavouring  to  cultivate  a  better  working 
acquaintance. 

Granted  that  the  ultimate  Christian 
motive  is  religious,  we  must  have  a  more 
humanly  near  working  purpose  than  the 
doing  right  in  order  to  please  God.  Few 
men  can  carry  so  remote  an  abstraction 
into  human  adjustments  unless  the 
human  adjustments  are  thought  of  as  an 
end  in  themselves.  To  please  God  by 
being  right  with  men  is  a  true  ideal,  but 
it  does  not  show  us  what  being  right  with 
men  consists  in  nor  does  it  train  the  fac- 
ulties and  capabilities  into  specific  habits 
of  action. 

Too  often  the  Christian  falls  back  into 
the  lap  of  something  that  he  calls  **spirit- 
uality,"  and  so  evades  the  real  issue — the 
near  duty  of  discernment  and  coopera- 
tion. Or  he  rests  in  his  orthodoxy  and 
his  literalism,  or  on  certain  pet  rigours. 

The  famous  defaulter.  Hippie,  made  a 
point  of  condemning  the  use  of  tobacco, 
liquor,  and  the  Sunday  newspaper.  A 
preacher  said  of  him,  "This  man  Hippie 


iZ  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

had  been  fattening  on  sermons  about 
love  and  heaven.  .  .  .  He  was  one  of 
your  strict  churchmen,  who  did  not  con- 
sider that  the  minister  preached  gospel 
when  he  insisted  upon  honesty  in  busi- 
ness life.  Hippie's  conception  of  relig- 
ion was  to  be  exact  in  your  formularies, 
but  it  never  occurred  to  him  that  it  was 
the  Christian's  duty  to  be  true  and  hon- 
est and  brave  and  pure." 

This  may  or  may  not  be  literally  true  of 
this  particular  man.  But  it  is  essentially 
true  of  a  type  of  supposedly  religious 
persons  who,  whether  hypocritical  in 
purpose  or  not,  are  strict  about  their 
theology,  their  forms,  their  church  atten- 
tions, and  even  some  ethical  matters,  but 
who  have  no  really  moral  habit  of  mind. 
It  was  also  said  with  reason  that  such  a 
character  is  largely  the  product  of 
^legalism." 

There  was  a  time,  within  easy  memory, 
too,  when  orthodoxy  would  scarcely  tol- 
erate any  particular  stress  upon  morals 
or  ethics.     It  fairly  trembled  lest  man, 


OUR    DUTY   TO    OUR    POWERS  19 

becoming  Impressed  with  his  human  rela- 
tions, should  forget  his  relations  to  God. 
In  order  to  place  ethics  under  a  ban  it 
unjustly  coined  the  term  **mere  moral- 
ity," and  pointed  the  finger  of  theologi- 
cal condemnation  at  him  who  enter- 
tained that  **mere  morality"  too  gener- 
ously, (No  word  in  the  language  can 
be  used  with  more  insidious  unfairness 
than  the  word  **mere."  It  is  one  of  the 
main  mischief-makers  of  discussion.) 

Referring  to  this  absurd,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  unscriptural,  coldness  toward  our 
moral  duties  considered  as  duties.  Pro- 
fessor Coe^  notes  that  "less  than  fifty 
years  ago  a  writer  on  ^natural  goodness' 
asserted  that  *moral  men  as  a  class,  and 
in  view  of  their  morality,  inflict  the  sever- 
est injury  on  the  cause  of  religion.'  .  .  . 
The  more  perfect  the  moralist,  the  more 
fatal  the  influence !"  This  was  that  old 
misconception  which,  as  Coe  adds,  "as- 
sumes that  if  only  we  have  faith  we  do 

*  "Religion  of  a  Mature  Mind,"  p.  147. 


OP  THE     ^ 
'    ■  f-  r^  *►*  I  -IT- 


20  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

not  need  to  lay  very  much  stress  upon 
being  good.'' 

God  wants  us  to  be  good.  From  Gene- 
sis to  Revelation  the  Bible  is  big  with 
this  homely  fact.  He  wants  us  to  be  like 
himself;  but  the  only  way  that  we  can 
realise  what  the  goodness  of  God  means 
is  to  begin  by  being  good  to  man  in  a 
small  way  ourselves.  But  we  do  not  know 
how.  Our  powers  are  untrained.  We 
have  grown  up  without  definite  aims 
and  conceptions.  We  need  a  method,  a 
conscious  mode  of  thinking,  to  guide  our 
doing. 

Look  over  the  Christian  world.  There 
are  millions  professing  love  to  God  and 
love  to  man  and  yet  in  perpetual  con- 
flict of  criticism  one  of  another.  They 
would  not  disagree  on  the  point  that 
Judaism  and  Christianity,  unlike  the  pa- 
gan religions,  demand  moral  excellence 
in  conduct  and  character.  They  would 
not  deny  that  they  themselves  were 
faulty  or  sinful,  but  they  would  resent 
particular  charges  against  their  particular 


OUR    DUTY   TO    OUR    POWERS  %i 

faults,  going  in  most  cases  to  the  extent 
of  excusing  or  of  positively  justifying 
their  misdeeds  in  the  concrete. 

Yet  these  people  mean  to  be  good  by 
the  Gospel  standards,  and  they  are  not 
fairly  to  be  charged  with  hypocrisy. 
Most  of  them  are  not  competent  to  act 
the  purposeful  hypocrite,  if  they  would. 
They  mean  to  love  their  fellow-men,  but 
love  in  the  best  sense  is  not  whim.  It 
needs  enlightenment  and  training.  Its 
first  obligation  is  to  become  learned  and 
expert. 

Parents  suppose  that  because  they  love 
their  children  they  cannot  go  astray  in 
doing  as  they  please  with  them.  The 
amount  of  injustice  and  even  downright 
cruelty  committed  in  the  name  of  love  is 
prodigious. 

So  with  the  sympathies  and  the  benevo- 
lent virtues  generally.  The  fact  that 
they  are  intentionally  benevolent  does 
not  render  them  harmless.  Neither  does 
being  a  humble-minded,  earnest  Chris- 
tian guarantee  wisdom  in  the  mode  of 


X2  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

supposed  well-doing.  One  man,  for 
love's  sake,  throws  alms  to  the  pauper; 
another  from  the  same  motive  cautions 
him  against  doing  it.  Both  "love  the 
brethren,"  but  they  disagree  about  love's 
method  of  striving  to  be  a  doer  of  the 
Word. 

Parents  differ  in  the  motives  for  being 
good  which  they  present  to  their  chil- 
dren. With  some,  it  is  to  please  the  pa- 
rent, with  others  to  please  God;  or  it  is 
fear  of  punishment,  or  it  is  utilitarian — 
a  matter  of  final  rewards.  Until  there  is 
more  uniformity  of  moral  thinking  we 
cannot  have  sound  moral  conditions. 

Christians  are  conscientiously  busy  criti- 
cising one  another's  moral  standards. 
What  is  a  peccadillo  to  one  is  to  another 
a  heinous  sin  or  crime;  what  one  has 
never  stopped  to  consider  as  a  point  in 
Christian  morals,  has  to  another  been  a 
glaring  menace  or  a  positive  stumbling 
block.  Why  these  differences?  Arc 
they  not  all  Christians  *4n  good  stand- 
ing"— and  properly  reckoned  so  by  the 


OUR    DUTY   TO    OUR    POWERS  23 

Church?  Why,  then,  have  they  not 
reached  some  uniformity  of  moral  judg- 
ment? 

To  become  a  Christian  is  not  at  once  to 
attain  the  power  of  moral  discernment 
or  even  the  will  to  live  up  to  such  discern- 
ment as  is  already  attained.  But  to  be- 
come Christ's  is  to  gain  through  Him  the 
love  of  better  things,  to  seek  the  more 
excellent  way,  to  go  on  toward  perfec- 
tion.   The  question  is  how  to  do  it. 

Now  in  a  social  world,  in  the  corporate 
life,  what  does  this  mean  but  the  exercise 
of  human  powers?  To  consecrate  these 
powers,  however  concretely,  as  in  Miss 
HavergaFs  hymn,  "Take  my  life  and  let 
it  be,'*  is  to  be  incessantly  vigilant  that 
our  powers  neither  become  atrophied 
through  disuse  nor  crippled  through  mis- 
use. I  cannot  understand  how  taking 
Christ  into  my  life  or  the  knowing  of  it 
through  my  love  to  the  brethren  relieves 
me  from  the  responsibility  of  expertly  us- 
ing these  God-given  faculties.  No  one 
so  much  as  the  Christian  is  under  obliga- 


24  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

tion  to  be  wise,  discreet,  discerning, 
healthy,  strong,  energetic,  efficient. 

In  Swedenborg's  phrase,  the  **  Kingdom 
of  God  is  a  kingdom  of  uses."  Chris- 
tianity and  uselessness  are  incompatible 
ideas,  for  Christianity  is  essentially  so- 
cial. To  be  immoral  is  to  be  anti-social ; 
it  is  to  disrupt  the  social  bond.  Likewise 
to  be  useless  in  society  is  to  be  anti-social 
and  is  virtually  immoral. 

But  love  to  God  and  faith  in  Christ 
do  not  appear  to  teach  a  Christian  how 
to  be  useful,  even  though  he  grow  into 
the  desire.  We  have  hosts  of  obstructive 
— because  unwise — Christians  about  us 
as  witnesses.  Why  is  this  so  ?  Do  we  not 
also  see  the  wicked,  and  even  the  un- 
learned wicked,  turning  to  Christ  and 
showing  a  fine  discrimination  in  their 
moral  reformation?  We  see  both,  and 
why  ?  Some  have  a  more  acute  and  a  bet- 
ter discernment  than  others.  This  is  a 
matter  apart  from  faith  or  '^conversion.'' 

All  this  points  to  the  fact  that  when  we 
begin  to  talk  about  religion  and  **spirit- 


OUR    DUTY   TO   OUR   POWERS  25 

uality"  and  faith  and  love  and  salvation 
we  are  prone  to  lose  sight  of  the  truth 
that  a  right  spirit  or  a  consecrated  mind, 
or  heart,  does  not  Insure  skill  In  mental 
or  moral  discernment  any  more  than  It 
guarantees  muscular  development.  It 
does  not  adjust  religious  faith  or  belief 
to  forms  of  environment.  It  may  beget 
the  desire,  but  It  does  not  direct  the  facul- 
ties specifically. 

The  egregious  mistake  of  Christians — 
not  of  Christianity — appears  to  me  to  be 
this  comparative  neglect  of  our  God- 
given  outfit  for  social  life.  There  is  a 
tendency  to  think  that  with  the  Book  In 
hand  we  have  all  that  is  necessary  to  the 
following  of  Its  lead.  Can  we  not  be  as 
irreverent  toward  our  powers  as  toward 
the  Book? 

Society  called  Christian  is  a  tangle  of 
diverse  ethical  aims  and  judgments 
largely  because  it  has  no  unit,  no  definite 
centre  of  ethical  thinking,  no  track  for  Its 
train  of  pity,  kindness,  and  benevolent 
generosity,  no  ethical  habit  of  mind. 


26  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

Jesus  IS  admittedly  the  ideal  man  and 
love  to  God  the  confessed  animating 
purpose.  But  the  truth  is,  God  has  set 
us  in  a  concrete,  tangible  world,  and 
while  we  are  as  nothing  without  the 
Spirit,  our  human  construction  demands 
a  lower  ideal  than  the  divine — something 
nearer  to  us,  more  tangible,  more  work- 
able for  immediate  use.  The  question, 
What  would  Jesus  do  ?  is  interesting  for 
discussion  without  general  agreement; 
but  the  question.  What  must  I  do?  re- 
quires me  to  take  into  consideration  my 
powers  in  their  relation  to  my  fellows  in 
a  social  world. 

This  means  an  ordered  habit  of 
thought,  stable,  yet  adjustable  to  an  ever- 
developing  order  of  things.  Otherwise 
we  may  prove  ourselves  piously  irrever- 
ent by  dissipating  our  powers  in  caprice. 

To  live  without  an  organising,  directing 
idea  is  to  be  chaotic,  anarchic,  futile,  and 
foolish.  If  there  is  an  impiety  of  '*mere 
morality,"  there  is  an  immorality  of  mere 
piety.     Let  us  be  good  if  we  would  be 


OUR    DUTY   TO    OUR    POWERS  27 

God's.  If  we  would  do  His  will  let  us 
be  moral.  If  we  would  love  our  brothers 
let  us  learn  how  to  think  about  them  to 
the  end  that  we  may  grow  skilful  in  the 
exercise  of  our  social  relations — our 
morals.  Let  us  not  think  ourselves  con- 
secrated with  our  mind — our  intellectual 
discrimination  left  out. 

The  culture  of  morals — personal  and 
social — is  a  different  thing  from  the  *'re- 
ligion  of  culture"  or  of  science  or  of 
ethics.  Culture  as  culture  is  indeed  life- 
less. It  has  been  shrewdly  said  that 
civilisation  never  civilises. 

The  Christ  is  the  renewing,  vitalising 
agency,  but  his  Gospel  demands  the  cul- 
ture of  morals.  It  does  not  permit  the 
ignoring  of  powers;  it  expects  the  useful- 
ness to  society  that  can  grow  only  by 
study  and  by  practice.  We  are  the  trus- 
tees not  alone  of  our  property,  but  of 
our  powers.  Faith  and  Love  are  not 
enough  to  enable  us  to  administer  that 
trust  wisely, 

A  practised  moral  discrimination  and  a 


28  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

courage  to  act  on  it  are  essential  to  that 
social  soundness  which  is  moral.  This  is 
both  more  and  less  than  being  an  ethi- 
cal philosopher  as  such.  Moralists  are 
not  necessarily  moral.  The  moral  dis- 
crimination must  carry  a  God-conscious- 
ness with  it,  even  though  this  God-con- 
sciousness is  not  morality.  Mrs.  Hough- 
ton calls  attention  to  the  French  pessi- 
mism resulting  from  godless  text  books 
on  morals.^  Undoubtedly  she  is  right, 
but  while  God  is  the  ultimate  sanction  we 
must  have  a  more  distinctly  human  and 
social  sanction.  This  we  shall  find  to  be 
the  Sanction  of  Justice. 

The  truth  is,  the  Church,  if  it  would 
grow  in  efficiency  as  evangeliser  and  civil- 
Iser,  must  avail  itself  of  the  findings  of 
sociological  investigation.  Science  is  the 
natural  ally  of  the  Church,  which  the 
Church  is  too  slow  to  recognise. 

That  learned  expert  in  foreign  mission 
methods,  Dr.  Sidney  L.  Gulick,  has  told 

*  "Telling  Bible  Stories,"  p.  9. 


OUR    DUTY    TO    OUR    POWERS  29 

US  that  the  foreign  mission  will  gain  Its 
highest  efficiency  when  it  assumes  the 
character  of  a  social  settlement,  when 
the  missionary  will  not  only  proclaim  the 
true  religion  in  the  abstract,  but  will  la- 
bour to  transform  the  entire  social  life  of 
the  people. 

This  means  to  clean  the  place  with 
bucket  and  brush  as  well  as  to  cleanse  the 
heart  with  the  **blood  of  Christ'';  it 
means  to  take  measures  against  insecurity 
of  property  and  life,  against  ignorance, 
carnality,  and  disease;  it  means  to  teach 
help  to  the  less  favoured,  public  spirit 
and  community  solidarity,  and  mutuality 
of  interests,  reciprocity  of  rights  and  of 
duties — the  essence  of  which  Is  the 
Charity  of  Justice. 

This  sociological  education  Indeed  Is 
necessary  not  only  to  the  propagation  of 
Christianity  abroad,  but  In  our  own 
homes.  ^'Unless  a  child,"  says  President 
Nicholas  Murray  Butler,^  ^^understands 

'<*The  Meaning  of  Education/*  p.  27. 


30  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

that  though  he  is  an  individual  he  is  also 
a  member  of  the  body  politic,  of  an  insti- 
tutional life  in  which  he  must  give  and 
take,  defer  and  obey,  adjust  and  corre- 
late, and  that  with  all  this  there  can  be  no 
civilisation  and  no  progress,  we  are 
thrown  back  into  the  condition  of 
anarchy — the  anarchy  of  Rousseau — or 
the  collectivism  and  stagnation  of  China, 
India,  and  Egypt." 

The  Church  is  beginning  to  realise  that 
it  must  recognise  this  matter  of  the  body 
politic  as  a  moral  question  or  fail  of  its 
mission.  Already  we  find  the  Church 
moving  toward  an  active  interest  in  or- 
ganised labour,  child  emancipation,  im- 
migration, industrialism,  and  socialism. 
In  all  these  questions  justice-charity  is 
the  keynote  and  the  intellectual  directive. 
Love  of  man — Christian  brotherhood — 
is  the  propelling  force,  justice  lays  the 
track.  God  the  Father  was  the  divine  in- 
spirational force,  Jesus  was  the  way. 
Jesus  was  incarnate  justice,  as  he  was 
incarnate  charity.    The  two  became  one 


OUR   DUTY   TO   OUR   POWERS  31 

in  him.  Never  did  he  utter  a  more  far- 
reaching,  all-comprehending  moral  prin- 
ciple than  when  he  said,  **Render  unto 
Csesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's  and 
unto  God  the  things  that  are  God's." 
This  is  all  that  justice  asks,  all  that  love 
asks,  all  that  charity  asks. 

Nor  are  we  to  regard  the  body  politic 
or  the  institutional  life  as  bounded  by  our 
national  confines  or  the  shadow  of  our 
flag.  It  means  man.  It  was  Phillips 
Brooks  who  said  that  "No  man  has  come 
to  true  greatness  who  has  not  felt  in 
some  degree  that  his  life  belongs  to  his 
race  and  that  what  God  gives  him,  he 
gives  him  for  mankind.'' 

The  relation  between  man  and  man  is 
moral,  however  truly  it  be  rooted  in 
religion.  The  very  idea  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  is  a  corporate  idea.  It  is  a  thing 
of  modes,  methods,  manners.  The  move- 
ment against  child  labour  is  moral ; 
politeness  in  the  home,  courtesy  at  court, 
are  at  bottom  moral.  Morality,  as  al- 
ready said,  necessitates  training  in  dis- 


34  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

crimination.  It  demands  that  the  spirit- 
ual eye  be  trained  to  a  far  horizon,  to  a 
long  look  back  for  causes,  forward 
for  effects.  It  calls  loudly  for  the  Imagi- 
nation. The  Golden  Rule  does  not  tell 
me  how  to  wish  that  others  should  do  to 
me.  I  must  love  my  neighbour  as  my- 
self, but  how  ought  I  to  love  myself? 

For  the  want  of  a  directed  Imagination 
and  a  trained  mode  of  social  thought  I 
may  violate  these  divine  orders  In  my 
veriest  zeal  to  carry  them  out.  Well- 
meaning  men  vote  against  their  own 
individual  and  social  interests  not  neces- 
sarily because  they  are  selfish  or  timid, 
but  because  they  are  short-sighted  and 
prosaic.  **Good"  people  encourage  some 
forms  of  amusement  because  they  are 
satisfied  with  an  Immediate  pleasure  and 
cannot  see  the  tendencies  of  such  courses 
in  the  distance.  The  teleologlcal  faculty, 
the  telescopic  vision,  is  undeveloped. 
Moral  thinking  is  undirected.  It  wan- 
ders without  a  surveyed  road  ahead. 

Such  people  are  satisfied  with  the  miti- 


OUR    DUTY   TO    OUR    POWERS  33 

gation  of  pain  by  deeds  of  pity  instead 
of  preventing  pain  to  the  next  generation 
by  the  culture,  let  us  say,  of  justice,  or 
of  some  other  all-embracing  moral  ideal 
— if  there  be  one.  They  would  rather 
cure  the  man  disabled  by  football  than 
prevent  the  coaching  that  orders  to  *4ay 
a    man   out"    if   necessary   to   winning. 

They  would  rather  raise  money  for  a 
church  by  the  vice  of  gambling,  so  that 
the  church  could  fight  vice,  than  prevent 
the  very  vice  that  the  church  ought  to 
fight.  They  would  rather  be  taxed  for 
reformatories,  prisons,  almshouses,  and 
hospitals  than  prevent  a  large  need  of 
supporting  such  institutions  by  pursuing 
a  preventive  policy  with  children. 

When  I  say  **they,"  I  mean  people  who 
are  Christians  in  **good  standing."  They 
want  to  be  in  good  standing  not  for  busi- 
ness reasons  nor  with  any  conscious  hypo- 
critical intent,  but  sincerely.  They  believe 
in  God  and  advocate  love  and  charity 
to  all  men,  but  they  lack  the  vision  o^- 
consequences  and  of  causes.     They  can 


34  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

imagine  enough  to  pity,  to  sympathise, 
and  in  a  degree  to  be  kind ;  but  they  can- 
not see  far  enough  to  reach  the  heart  of 
equity,  of  reciprocity,  of  equalisation,  of 
the  whole  duty  toward  the  Caesar  of 
brotherhood. 

Here,  then,  is  a  matter  of  the  use  and 
cultivation  of  powers  toward  an  ideal, 
social  morality.  Here  is  the  constructive 
demand  for  the  kingdom  of  uses.  This 
means  an  ordered  thinking  of  far-off 
cause  and  effect,  a  refined  and  apt  dis- 
crimination, a  sensitive  courage. 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  love,  love,  love. 
It  is  not  enough  to  be  sorry  for  sin  and 
to  aspire  to  heaven,  or  to  accept  a  **plan 
of  salvation,"  unless  that  plan  includes 
the  divine  truth  that  our  powers  are  not 
to  be  ignored  or  minimised  simply  be- 
cause we  profess  a  religion  of  love  and 
faith.  Just  as  great  as  that  duty  of  love 
to  God  and  faith  in  Christ  is  the  duty  of 
using  what  he  has  given  us.  Prayer  and 
praise  are  no  substitute  for  thinking  and 
feeling  and  doing.     We  are  in  a  moral 


OUR    DUTY    TO    OUR    POWERS  35 

world — that  is,  a  world  of  human  and 
social  relations,  and  we  are  bound  to 
study  the  way  to  be  moral  or  right  in  all 
our  relations.  "There  is  no  true  man- 
hood without  morality,  for  manhood 
rests  in  the  social  conscience,  and  God 
wants  the  best  of  manhood  for  His  ser- 
vice, because  the  best  of  manhood  can 
hold  most  of  God." 

Now,  if  the  moral  thinking  of  Chris- 
tians is  as  chaotic  as  we  have  just  indi- 
cated and  if  the  discrimination  is  as  un- 
certain and  as  inexact,  it  is  evident  that 
there  must  be  found  a  norm  of  educa- 
tion for  the  training  of  the  moral  dis- 
cernment. This  norm  must  become  the 
axis  or  germinal  centre  of  all  our  moral 
thinking.  We  must  measure  by  it,  direct 
by  it,  control  by  it.  It  must  fix  our  goals 
and  set  the  pace  for  running  and  light  the 
way  and  clear  the  track.  Love  is  the  en- 
ergising power,  but  love  is  not  a  trusty 
directive.  Love  needs  wisdom.  Where 
is  it? 


Ill 

GENESIS  OF  THE  SENSE  OF  JUSTICE  AND 
OF   MORALITY 

If  we  watch  the  signs  of  feeling  in  young 
children  under  certain  circumstances,  we 
shall  see  how  early  and  with  what  vigour 
the  property  sense  develops. 

A  certain  little  girl  in  the  home  was 
spilling  her  kindergarten  beads  when  her 
father  rose  to  take  them  from  her.  With 
muscles  tense  in  determination  she 
clasped  her  little  hands  over  her  treas- 
ures and  exclaimed,  ''No!  those  are 
mineF^  The  father  with  quick  Insight 
recognising  her  feeling,  withdrew  his 
hand.  On  this  display  of  concession  to 
the  child's  sense  of  property  rights,  she 
arose  and  said  graciously,  *Tapa  can  take 
Rachel's  beads  now."  The  child  had  no 
wish  to  combat  her  father,  nor  even  to 


SENSE    OF  JUSTICE    AND   OF   MORALITY    37 

deprive  him  of  the  beads,  but  she  wanted 
her  property  rights  recognised. 

Here  was  a  sense  of  personal  relations 
to  persons  and  to  things.  It  asserted 
property  rights,  forbade  trespass,  carried 
a  question  of  give  and  take,  distinguished 
offence  and  defence — in  short,  insisted 
on  the  recognition  of  meum  and  tuum 
and  foreshadowed  acknowledgment  of 
personal  accountability. 

If  we  tie  together  the  hands  of  a  much 
younger  child,  he  will  struggle  to  free 
them.  This  is  not  necessarily  because  he 
wishes  to  employ  his  hands  for  some  spe- 
cific purpose  at  the  moment,  but  because 
we  violate  his  instinct  of  power.  Very 
early  indeed  does  the  child  declare  by  his 
actions  a  proprietary  right  In  his  facul- 
ties or  powers.  In  truth,  this  is  but  an 
aspect  of  the  law  of  self-preservation. 

This  proprietary  sense  is  but  an  earlier, 
more  subtle,  more  intimate,  more  funda- 
mental form  of  the  property  sense,  which 
term  is  better  reserved  for  material  pos- 
sessions    of     things     outside     of     us. 


3?  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

Froebers  aim  was  thoroughly  funda- 
mental, for  it  was  to  put  the  child  in  pos- 
session of  his  own  powers. 

It  was  to  develop  the  resources  of  the 
individual  to  the  utmost  benefit  of  soci- 
ety. Hence  the  basal  conception  of  the 
kindergarten  is  that  of  community  life, 
developing  the  two  essentials  of  individ- 
uality and  mutuality — rights  and  duties, 
meum  and  tuum.  The  child  is  a  member 
of  a  larger  whole. 

Now  out  of  the  proprietary  sense,  in 
connection  with  the  recognition  of  hu- 
man relations,  springs  the  sentiment  of 
rights.  But  it  is  impossible  for  the  child 
or  man  to  live  in  these  human  relations 
without  his  imagination  opening  to  him 
an  exchange  of  places  with  his  neigh- 
bour. He  cannot  help  but  put  himself  in 
his  neighbour's  place  under  stress,  and, 
in  turn,  demanding  that  his  neighbour 
do  the  same  for  him.  Thus  the  idea  of 
duty  and  of  reciprocity  is  begotten,  and 
he  becomes  moral. 

The  regulation  and  control  of  these  so- 


SENSE    OF    JUSTICE    AND    OF   MORALITY      39 

cial  relations,  the  securing  of  these 
rights,  the  implication  that  such  security 
must  be  guaranteed  to  all  or  to  none,  de- 
velops a  notion  of  a  moral  social  order 
of  which  the  controlling  principle  or  mas- 
ter mode  is  that  which  we  call  fairness, 
equity,  or  justice.  Fair  play,  the  ^'square 
deal,"  is  the  first  morality.  The  recogni- 
tion of  meum  and  tuurriy  working  both 
ways  as  rights  and  as  duties,  is  the  bed 
rock  of  the  moral  life  and  the  call  of 
justice. 

Morality  and  justice  are  at  bottom  one. 
They  arise  out  of  the  very  necessity  of 
personal,  individual,  and  social  self- 
preservation.  The  first  struggle  of  the 
child  to  free  himself  of  bondage  or  to  de- 
fend his  property  from  trespass  is  not  In 
the  nature  of  kindness,  generosity,  or 
benevolence,  but  of  establishing  a  stable 
and  equitable  social  order,  a  reciprocity 
of  rights  and  of  duties,  which  in  the  total 
is  the  ideal  of  justice  or  the  highest  com- 
mon good.  '*If  ye  have  not  been  faith- 
ful in  that  which  is  another's,  who  will 


40  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

give  you  that  which  is  your  own?"  To 
be  unfaithful  to  society  is  to  suffer  per- 
sonal loss  also/ 

As  the  sentiment  of  justice  is  the  earliest 
definite  motive  to  develop  in  the  individ- 
ual, so  does  it  appear  to  be  the  earliest 
in  the  history  of  the  race.  Very  sugges- 
tive is  George  Matheson's  interpretation 
of  the  story  of  Eden.  His  deduction  is 
that  the  earliest  moral  appeal  was  the 
appeal  to  human  justice. 

Adam  had  experienced  the  sense  of  pro- 
prietorship. He  "stretched  his  hand 
toward  the  trees  of  the  Garden  and  said, 
*They  are  mine.'  Through  the  cool  air 
a  voice  comes,  *They  are  not  all  yours ;  it 
is  a  divided  ownership.'  With  that  voice 
came  the  first  possibility  of  actual  trans- 
gression— of  stepping  into  another's 
field.  That  other  was  here  the  Creator ; 
there  was  no  rival  child  to  say,  *This  part 
belongs  to  me;'  therefore  the  Almighty 
said  it.     The  first  thing  prohibited  was 

'  Luke  1 6  :  I2, 


SENSE   OF    JUSTICE   AND   OF   MORALITY     41 

trespassing  on  the  divine  field — for  the 
simple  reason  that  there  was  no  rival 
human  field.  The  earliest  moral  appeal 
was  an  appeal  to  human  justice.  ...  It 
is  not  a  demand  for  reverence,  a  demand 
for  homage,  a  demand  for  sacrifice ;  it  is 
a  demand  for  bare  justice.  'We  parted 
this  field  between  us,  you  and  I,  let  us 
keep  to  our  contract.  I  gave  you  one  side 
of  the  garden,  I  retained  the  other.'  .  .  . 
The  common  view  is  that  it  is  a  case  of 
mere  disobedience.  I  do  not  think  that 
is  the  deepest  idea  of  the  picture.  I  hold 
that  the  primitive  narration  has  attached 
itself  not  to  the  portrayal  of  obedience, 
but  to  the  portrayal  of  justice.  It  is  not 
a  question  of  resistance  to  divine  author- 
ity, it  is  a  question  of  interference  with 
divine  possession.  .  .  .  The  law  which 
Adam  seeks  to  violate  is  not  a  law  of 
authority,  it  is  a  law  of  justice,  of  equity, 
of  the  relation  of  meum  and  tutim,  .  .  . 
It  is  not  the  dependant  forgetting  the 
respect  to  his  master,  it  Is  the  partner 
ignoring  his  contract,  the  associate  break- 


42  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

ing  his  bond,  the  sharer  of  dual  rights 
attempting  to  encroach  upon  the  rights  of 
the  other.  .  .  .  Obedience  is  not  the  be- 
ginning of  a  child's  morality.  The  dif- 
ference between  his  and  yours  is  the  first 
thing  which  your  child  should  know."^ 
Here  morality  begins. 

It  makes  no  difference  whether  we  wish 
to  take  the  story  of  Eden  narrowly  as 
literal  history  or  broadly  as  universal 
truth  given  by  allegory.  There  is  always 
this  lesson  in  it  which  Matheson  has  so 
forcefully  pointed  out. 

Similarly,  the  story  of  Cain  and  Abel 
may  be  taken  either  way,  but  it  will  al- 
ways open  the  larger  truth  of  modern 
sociology  that  each  one  is  measurably 
responsible  for  the  condition  of  all.  In 
so  far  as  we  permit  or  even  foster  social 
degradation  we  are  the  successors  of 
Cain.  Referring  to  tenement  conditions, 
Jacob  Riis  has  said  that  it  is  as  bad  to 
kill  a  man  with  a  house  as  with  an  axe. 

*  See  Chapter  VIII  for  a  fuller  discussion 
of  this. 


SENSE    OF    JUSTICE   AND    OF   MORALITY     43 

It  is  a  little  less  direct,  but  in  the  end  it  is 
only  a  form  of  the  implement  of  Cain. 
Modern  manslaughter  is  a  fine  art. 

Now  note  how  this  primitive  aspect  of 
trespass — primitive  in  the  race  and  in  the 
child — fits  the  finding  of  modern  crimi- 
nology. The  first  anti-social  impulse 
which  collides  with  the  criminal  law  is 
the  vagrant  tendency.  Vagrancy  is  a 
habitual  trespass,  an  ignoring  of  bounds. 
The  next  anti-social  impulse  is  against 
property ;  and  the  last  is  against  the  per- 
son. A  vagrant  loses  interest  in  meum 
and  tuum;  this  leads  to  the  destruction 
against  property,  and  finally  to  personal 
violence. 

The  sin  against  justice  is  the  moral  de- 
fection in  all.  The  father  who  attempted 
to  put  his  hands  on  his  child's  beads  was 
an  ignorer  of  limits,  of  bounds ;  his  hands 
were  vagrant.  They  forgot  the  right  of 
property,  and  in  some  cases  the  father 
might  have  resorted  to  brutal  violence  to 
carry  out  his  purpose. 

Now  while  love  is  the  greatest  thing  in 


44  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

the  world,  the  vital  social  binding  force, 
the  royal  power,  common  experience 
shows  that  love  can  be  unlovely  (as  al- 
ready pointed  out),  because  unwise,  and 
because  unwise,  unfair.  The  throne, 
therefore,  needs  a  trained  counsellor,  a 
premier  to  give  It  direction  and  to  guide 
with  steadied  skill,  the  nice  adjustment  of 
human  relations.  And  these  relations 
grow  more  and  more  intricate. 

Where,  then,  in  the  catalogue  of  human 
attributes — call  them  virtues.  Instincts, 
sentiments,  or  what  you  will — where,  I 
say,  will  you  find  this  premier?  Which 
begins  early  and  persists  throughout  life? 
Which  is  surest,  most  nearly  universal, 
most  capable  of  exerting  a  consistent  con- 
trol? Which  combines  in  superior 
degree  a  deliberating  intelligence  with 
strong  feeling?  Which  is  the  most  ra- 
tional equaliser,  the  most  democratic,  the 
most  far-sighted,  the  exactest  regulator? 
Which  Is  Incapable  of  being  overdone, 
overestimated,  or  In  practice  driven  too 
far?    Which  Is  the  most  elemental,  the 


SENSE    OF    JUSTICE    AND    OF   MORALITY      45 

most  inclusive  of  all  that  makes  for  social 
equality,  solidarity,  stability,  and  moral 
efficiency  ? 

There  can  be  but  one  answer :  It  is  this 
something  that  we  call  JUSTICE,  or 
equity,  or  fairness.  It  dawns,  as  has 
just  been  shown,  in  early  childhood  and 
is  never  extinguished.  It  is  larger  than 
kindness,  more  economic  than  generosity, 
less  emotional  than  pity,  farther  sighted 
than  benevolence,  for  it  carries  and  regu- 
lates them  all. 

Kindness  without  justice  is  only  half 
kind;  justice  without  kindness  is  on  the 
road  to  being  kind.  Was  it  not  Kant 
who  expressed  his  surprise  that  there  was 
so  much  kindness  and  so  little  justice 
among  men?  Ruskin,  too,  sees  that  if 
you  do  justice  to  your  brother  you  will 
come  to  love  him;  but  if  you  do  him  in- 
justice because  you  don't  love  him  you 
will  come  to  hate  him.  The  one  divine 
work,  the  one  ordered  sacrifice,  he  in- 
sists, is  to  do  justice ;  and  **it  is  the  last  we 
are  ever  inclined  to  do."     And  Royce  ob- 


^-i-^kit^ 


RolTY 


46  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

serves  that  **mere  kindliness  and  plastic- 
ity accomplish  nothing." 

The  kindly  or  benevolent  motives  have 
been  well  named  the  ^^duties  of  imperfect 
obligation."  Necessary  as  they  are,  as 
accessories  in  social  morals,  they  are  In 
themselves  flabby,  Inconstant,  unstable, 
indefinite,  sporadic,  deflecting,  unor- 
dered, chaotic,  anarchic,  sometimes 
suicidal.  Under  the  master  hand  of  jus- 
tice, however,  they  become  the  queen's 
ministers. 

Scarce  an  article  as  justice  seems  to  be 
in  human  relations.  It  is  the  one  thing  for 
which  human  nature  Is  always  feeling 
and  In  which  It  rests  as  a  right.  Listen 
to  the  people's  talk,  look  at  your  news- 
papers, magazines,  books,  your  peace 
conferences,  wherever  there  Is  discussion 
of  clash  and  difference  you  will  always 
find  that  the  bottom  word  Is  ^'justice"  or 
**fairness."  An  examination  of  the  let- 
ters from  the  people  to  a  leading  news- 
paper, mainly  on  matters  of  public  con- 
cern, shows  that  the  word  *  justice"  re- 


SENSE    OF    JUSTICE   AND    OF   MORALITY     47 

curs  as  a  signature,  incomparably  oftener 
than  any  other — unless  it  be  something 
like  ^'Constant  Reader/'  which  signifies 
nothing.  It  seems  as  though  moral  ap- 
peal could  no  farther  go.  It  is  the  verbal 
ultimatum.  Until  the  foot  touches  this 
rock  the  wrestle  is  all  in  the  air.  Con- 
versely, no  offence  stings  so  deeply  and 
smarts  so  long  as  the  offence  against 
justice.  Injustice  to  childhood  rankles 
through  manhood. 

You  wish  to  pay  a  merited  compliment 
to  a  man  who  brings  you  his  picture,  you 
say  it  does  not  do  him  justice.  You  do  not 
say  it  is  unkind  or  unbenevolent  or  un- 
generous, for  that  would  imply  that  he 
needed  something  not  quite  his  own;  and 
you  want  to  imply  that  he  has  a  fair 
claim  on  something  in  his  countenance 
which  has  been  held  back — filched,  as  it 
were,  by  a  chemical  immorality.  It  is  his 
proprietary  right. 

What  wonder  that  Webster  called  jus- 
tice '*the  greatest  interest  of  man  on 
earth    ...    the  ligament  which  holds 


48  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

civilised  beings  and  civilised  nations  to- 
gether/' adding  that  wherever  it  is  duly 
honoured,  ** there  is  a  foundation  for  so- 
cial security.''  Demosthenes  saw  that 
**It  is  not  possible  to  found  a  lasting 
power  upon  injustice."  Harking  back 
to  the  day  of  Abraham,  we  find  the  di- 
vine recipe  for  ^'keeping  the  way  of  the 
Lord"  to  be  the  doing  of  "justice  and 
judgment."  The  Psalmist  who  begins 
his  song  (89)  in  the  strain  of  singing  of 
the  mercies  of  the  Lord  forever  pro- 
claims the  foundation  of  God's  throne  to 
be  justice  (or  righteousness)  and  judg- 
ment. 

Undoubtedly  we  all  believe  In  some- 
thing that  we  call  justice,  but  we  are  not 
all  ready  to  allow  the  subordination  to 
justice  of  kindness,  pity,  and  the  benevo- 
lent or  gentler  virtues  of  **indefinlte  obli- 
gation." Much  less  are  we  all  willing 
to  admit  that  exacting  justice  Is  the 
pivotal  morality,  the  tap  root  of  our  con- 
ception of  duties,  as  well  as  of  rights,  and 
in  fact  the  historical  and  psychological 


SENSE    OF    JUSTICE    AND    OF   MORALITY     49 

base  of  moral  control  and  of  moral  char- 
acter, and  of  the  social  bond. 

Anything  but  that  I  some  will  say.  For 
instance,  I  chance  upon  a  sermonette  on 
**HumIlity,  the  Foundation  Virtue." 
How  can  humility  have  any  discriminat- 
ing, directing  power  in  the  adjustment 
of  social  relations?  **The  very  essence 
of  humility  is  service  and  love,"  says  the 
writer.  **One  stoops  not  for  the  sake  of 
stooping — there  is  no  virtue  in  that — ^but 
to  help  some  one  else."  Quite  true;  this 
IS  the  divine  attitude  of  love.  But  moral- 
ity is  a  matter  of  adjustment  of  our  rela- 
tions one  with  another.  How  shall  we 
**help  some  one  else"  ?  It  is  easy  for  love 
to  harm  him  in  the  effort  and  so  to  be  im- 
moral. To  the  rule  of  justice  we  must 
turn  for  a  basis  of  action  and  a  mode  of 
realising  the  moral  relation.  Humility 
is  an  attitude  growing  out  of  our  concep- 
tions of  that  which  is  above  us.  Justice 
is  a  mode  of  action  for  the  common 
good,  which  is  morality. 

It  has  also  been  urged  that  we  make 


50  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

honour  the  basis  of  ethical  instruction. 
But  honour  is  a  very  indefinite  obliga- 
tion. There  is  no  honour  without  justice, 
and  just  dealing  is  always  honourable. 

Have  we  not  freshly  before  us  the  les- 
son of  one  of  the  greatest  and  most 
dramatic  moral  victories  in  history,  turn- 
ing entirely  upon  the  question  and  the 
claim  of  justice?  In  the  vindication  of 
Alfred  Dreyfus  France  was  saved  from 
probable  disruption  and  no  one  knows 
what  horrors,  to  law,  order,  and  a  truer 
stability.  This  was  accomplished  in  the 
name  of  justice  by  the  courageous,  un- 
prejudiced examination  of  facts.  Ar- 
rayed against  this  single  moral  principle 
were  powerful  and  long  triumphant 
cliques  and  hordes  of  conspirators,  pas- 
sionately dominated  by  military  and 
racial  or  religious  antagonisms.  For 
years  this  vile  power  seemed  invincible. 
But  the  instinct  of  justice  was  stronger, 
and  after  twelve  years  prevailed. 

What  prospect  of  victory  could  have 
been  possible  had  the  conflict  against  this 


SENSE    OF    JUSTICE    AND    OF    MORALITY     51 

intrigue,  this  strong  military  arm,  been 
waged  in  the  name  of  humility,  or  even 
of  kindness  to  Dreyfus  ?  Perhaps  benev- 
olence or  kindness  or  pity  obtained  his 
pardon.  But  Zola  said,  **It  is  revolting 
to  obtain  pardon  when  one  asks  for  jus- 
tice." No !  justice  and  justice  alone  had 
in  it  the  virility,  the  investigating  pene- 
tration, the  energy,  the  courage,  the 
moral  vision  to  see  the  national  threat 
and  to  avert  and  conquer  it.  No  duty  of 
**indefinite  obligation"  could  have  stood 
for  a  moment  before  the  phalanx  of  in- 
trenched infamy.  Justice  alone  could 
see  that  the  social  structure  of  a  free 
people  was  imperilled  and  justice  alone 
was  competent  to  redeem  and  establish 
it  upon  a  firmer  foundation  than  ever  be- 
fore in  the  history  of  the  republic. 

Thus  we  are  prepared  to  examine  more 
closely  into  the  real  meaning  of  justice 
through  this  discovery  of  it  as  the  primi- 
tive moral  sensibility.  We  have  seen 
that  it  arises  psychologically  out  of  the 
very  law  of  life  itself  and  that  it  appears 


51  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

to  be  the  basal  principle  of  the  law  of 
social  as  well  as  of  individual  self-pres- 
ervation. Being  the  earliest  social  in- 
stinct, it  is  the  natural  point  of  departure 
for  the  moral-social  education.  Justice 
is  in  the  nature  of  the  case  the  efficient 
moral  appeal  and  the  axial  centre  of 
moral  training. 

But  before  we  accept  the  proposition 
that  the  moral  health  of  the  world  rests 
in  the  prescription  of  justice  as  a  mode  of 
education,  we  must  look  more  closely  into 
its  true  meaning  in  life,  its  universality  as 
a  virtue,  and  its  place  as  premier  in  the 
ethical  cabinet  of  which  Love  is  the 
queen. 


IV 

MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE 

The  word  *^justice"  has  baffled  many  an 
effort  at  exact  definition.  But,  like  some 
other  terms  over  which  philosophers 
puzzle,  it  carries  a  felt  meaning  in  the 
breast  of  the  people — that  primordial 
sense  of  proprietorship  in  one^s  own  char- 
acter and  possibilities,  that  elementary 
sense  of  the  balancing  of  owed  and 
owing,  of  the  reciprocity  of  rights  and 
duties,  the  fair  chance  or  the  **square 
deal,"  and,  most  vital  of  all,  the  uni- 
versal or  common  good. 

But  so  long  as  justice  has  but  a  felt 
meaning  it  is  liable  to  the  errancy  of 
other  more  benevolent  emotions — love, 
pity,  gratitude,  generosity.  It  is  in  its 
proper  development  the  intellectual  emo- 
tion par  excellence.     Rather  let  us  say  it 


54  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

is  intellection  warmed  by  emotion.  In 
the  highest  degree  it  demands  the  exer- 
cise of  the  imagination,  for  its  efficiency 
rests  upon  vision — long-distance  vision, 
undistorted  by  fear,  favour,  or  prejudice. 

While  justice  is  the  primitive,  the  basal 
moral  sentiment,  it  is  the  most  educable 
because  the  most  intellectual.  More  than 
any  other  is  it  ready  to  be  trained  into 
becoming  a  controlling  and  energetic 
habit  of  mind  and  a  clear  ground-plan 
of  social  morals.  It  is  the  thorough 
virtue  because  it  sees  throughly. 

A  blind  man  came  cautiously  feeling  his 
way  down  the  street  one  day  when  the 
sidewalks  were  newly  covered  with  snow. 
As  I  approached  him  from  an  opposite 
direction  a  group  of  boys  suddenly 
ceased  their  snow-ball  fight  in  response 
to  the  appeal  from  one  of  the  boys,  who 
happened  to  see  the  sightless  wayfarer 
moving  toward  them. 

**Hold  on,  fellows,"  I  heard  the  boy 
say  in  a  subdued,  almost  reverential  tone, 
"hold  on  until  this  blind  man  gets  by." 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      55 

The  response  was  Immediate.  In  the 
midst  of  the  group  the  poor  unfortunate 
and  I  passed  each  other  free  not  only  of 
molestation,  but  even  of  obstruction. 

The  usual  explanation  of  such  a  pro- 
ceeding would  be  that  the  boys  were 
moved  by  pity  or  sympathy  or  kindness. 
And  so  they  were. 

But  if  we  track  the  psychic  history  of 
this  **pity" — call  it  that — we  shall  see 
that  the  boys  were  conscious  that  here 
was  a  man  whom  nature  had  placed  at  a 
disadvantage.  He  had  lost  one  of  his 
powers  quite  essential  to  a  running  of 
their  gauntlet.  As  between  him  and 
them  the  conditions  were  uneven,  they 
were  not  level,  the  deal  would  be  any- 
thing but  square. 

The  taking  advantage  of  one  who  has 
thus  been  deprived  of  his  powers  is  in  a 
measure  an  act  accessory  to  this  depriva- 
tion. The  imagination  demands  that  we 
put  ourselves  in  the  unfortunate's  place. 
For  the  moment  we  suffer  the  realisation 
of  blindness  and  we  arise  to  protect  the 


56  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

real  sufferer  as  we  would  ourselves.  We 
may  call  this  the  pity  of  sympathy,  and  so 
it  is;  but  deeper  down  it  is  the  pity  of  jus- 
tice. We  may  call  it  kindness,  and  so  it 
is;  but  it  is  the  kindness  of  justice.  We 
may  call  it  charity,  and  so  it  is ;  but  it  is 
the  charity  of  justice. 

It  is  interesting  here  to  note  that  in  the 
Old  Testament  the  Hebrew  word 
Zedakah  means  both  justice  and  charity. 
The  Jewish  charity  box  to-day  is  in  strict 
Hebrew  tradition  and  linguistic  signifi- 
cance a  *^justice  box.'* 

The  Hebraic  idea  of  charity  carried 
with  it  a  sense  of  responsibility  and  obli- 
gation. Sharing  was  a  positive  duty. 
The  helpless  had  a  right  to  claim  the 
assistance  of  the  more  fortunate.  This 
reciprocity  and  equity  was  the  very 
essence  of  righteousness.  It  is  the  ideal 
of  Justice.  The  word  **judgment,'*  so 
often  coupled  with  **justice''  in  the  Old 
Testament,  means  (according  to  Moul- 
ton,  the  triumph  of  right  over  wrong. 

Modern  philanthropy  is  arriving  at  this 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      57 

very  coalescence  of  interpretation.  It  in- 
sists that  charity  should  be  something 
more  than  a  blind  response  to  the  feel- 
ings. It  must  see  where  actions  lead  to 
and  it  must  look  for  causes.  Ruskin, 
satirically  criticising  popular  charity, 
says,  **As  much  charity  as  you  choose, 
but  no  justice."  But  this  is  the  charity 
of  mere  emotion  rather  than  the  charity 
of  justice.  Jacob  Riis,  with  his  larger 
vision,  sums  it  all  when  he  says,  **Charity 
in  our  day  no  longer  means  alms,  but  jus- 
tice." Here  we  are  by  a  process  of  evolu- 
tion back  at  the  ancient  Hebrew  standard 
— marvellously  displayed  throughout  the 
nineteenth  chapter  of  Leviticus,  as  well 
as  elsewhere  in  Scripture.^ 

And  yet  we  have  arrived  at  no  such 
clear  definition  as  social  education  de- 
mands. The  felt  significance  of  the  idea 
of  one's  right  of  self-proprietorship  is 

*  See,  for  instance,  Deut.  24  :  13;  Isa.  32  :  16, 
17;  Psa.  106:3;  Prov.  14:34;  Deut.  15; 
Ex,  23:11;  Deut.  16:11-14;  10-18;  Isa. 
58  :  7,  8  ;  Ezek.  18:5-9;  etc. 


58  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

not  enough.  We  are  prone  to  use  our 
powers  unjustly  to  others,  and  therefore, 
by  virtue  of  the  social  tie,  in  the  long  run 
unjustly  to  ourselves.  Our  Ideas  of 
justice  become  warped  and  limited. 
Worse  than  that,  they  become  profes- 
sional and  technical  and  even  penal.  The 
very  essence  of  justice  drops  out  of  sight, 
supplanted  by  a  form  of  procedure. 
With  many  persons  It  stands  for  little  else 
than  retribution  or  punishment,  or  con- 
versely. It  stands  for  acquittal  from  an 
indictment  for  crime. 

The  felt  significance  of  the  term  **jus- 
tlce"  Is  not  so  much  wrong  per  se  as  It  Is 
Inadequate.  This  Inadequacy  results  In 
wrong.  The  native  sense,  previously  de- 
lineated, acquires  a  warp,  a  cant,  and 
must  be  educated  back  to  the  primal 
feeling  and  out  again  toward  a  true  Intel- 
lectual conception  of  rights  and  duties 
which  are  the  essence  of  the  social  organ- 
ism. 

A  journal  commenting  editorially  on 
the  acquittal  of  a  famous  criminal,  thus 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      59 

quotes:  **  *Human  justice  often  errs/ 
said  the  moralist.  *True,'  said  the  judge, 
*but  it's  the  only  kind  weVe  got.'  " 

If  **the  moralist"  said  this,  he,  too,  was 
in  need  of  a  definition.  Efforts  at  human 
justice  err;  but  justice  never.  Errancy 
and  justice  are  a  contradiction.  If  this 
were  not  so  we  should  have  no  moral 
anchorage,  no  fixity.  Too  well  we  know 
that  pity  may  harden,  that  gener- 
osity may  pauperise.  But  justice  is  the 
formative  and  the  corrective,  the  sure 
point  of  departure  in  social  safety. 

And  still  we  are  looking  for  a  concrete 
definition.  Great  thinkers,  writers,  and 
speakers  in  all  ages  have  said  many  fine 
and  true  things  about  justice.  But  the 
working  definition,  the  clear  formula  for 
a  definite  habit  of  mind,  calls  for  search. 

Justice  Field  called  justice  **the  great 
end  of  civil  society."  It  is  no  less  the 
great  means  to  its  own  end.  Nothing  be- 
gets justice  like  justice;  Theodore  Parker 
dignified  it  as  **the  keynote  of  the 
world;"  Emerson  claims  that  it  '^satisfies 


6o  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

everybody;"  Carlyle  classes  it  as  **sanity 
and  order,"  and  **the  everlasting  central 
law  of  this  universe;"  Disraeli  makes  it 
**truth  in  action;"  Wendell  Phillips  de- 
clares that  **utter  and  exact  justice"  is 
**the  one  clew  to  success."  We  have  al- 
ready seen  that  Webster  called  justice 
the  ligament  which  holds  civilised  beings 
and  civilised  nations  together,  and  that 
Demosthenes  saw  that  it  is  not  possible 
to  found  a  lasting  power  upon  injustice. 
With  Plato,  justice  is  **the  greatest 
good;"  to  Aristotle  it  includes  all  virtue. 

If  now  we  gather  up  these  terse  and 
radical  declarations  we  shall  find  some 
elements  common  to  many  or  to  all. 
Like  a  composite  photograph,  these 
common  points  will  be  very  much  accen- 
tuated by  correspondences  in  the  pictures. 
We  find,  then,  that  it  is  the  essential,  all- 
satisfying,  bond  or  moral  ligament  of 
ordered  society;  it  makes  for  unity,  is 
stable,  immutable,  exacting,  impartial, 
virile ;  the  root  virtue ;  the  moral  base. 

All  this  agrees  with  our  view  of  the 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      6i 

genesis  of  justice  and  of  the  synonymous 
character  of  justice  and  morals  as  devel- 
oped in  the  previous  chapter.  And  it 
agrees  with  the  law  of  justice-charity  in 
the  Old  Testament  and  with  the  ethics  of 
Jesus  as  comprehended  in  the  Golden 
Rule,  the  **Render  unto  Caesar,"  the  par- 
ables of  pounds  and  talents,  the  declara- 
tion of  the  unity  of  God  and  man,  and 
other  aspects  of  our  Lord's  teachings. 

And  yet  as  a  habit  of  mind,  a  working 
principle,  we  have  hardly  reached  a  ver- 
bal formula  or  definition.  We  might 
still  work  for  cure  rather  than  for  pre- 
vention, we  might  mistake  the  nature  of 
the  social  bond,  we  might  hope  for  the 
greatest  good  of  all  without  knowing 
good  when  we  see  it,  we  might  pray  for 
universal  virtue  and  truth  without  look- 
ing for  the  origin  of  vice  and  misery — 
much  less  recognising  ourselves  as  its  ac- 
countable abettor  or  producer. 

We  have  only  to  go  back  to  our  analy- 
sis of  the  genesis  again.  We  find  there 
something  else — the  proprietary  sense. 


6%  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

Now  Ruskin's  insight  touches  us  more 
closely.  He  says,  **  Justice  consists 
mainly  in  the  granting  to  every  human 
being  due  aid  in  the  development  of  such 
faculties  as  it  possesses  for  action  and  en- 
joyment." 

Sure  enough,  we  find  here  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  proprietary  right  of  the  indi- 
vidual in  his  natural  and  spiritual  possi- 
bilities, which  are  the  fundaments  of 
character.  We  obstruct  justice  when  we 
interfere  with  the  development  of  those 
possibilities  or  powers.  This  individual 
right  of  every  one  implies  a  correlative 
individual  duty  of  every  one.  This  is  the 
moral  sense  that  emerges  in  early  child- 
hood on  the  perception  of  personal 
powers  and  of  human  relations. 

But  for  brevity  and  simplicity  few  defi- 
nitions excel  that  of  Justinian:  '^Justice 
is  the  constant  and  unswerving  desire  to 
render  unto  every  man  his  own." 

Necessarily  this  means  that  every  one 
must  give  way  to  and  work  for  the  good 
of  society.    Ideally,  therefore,  justice  to 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      63 

one  includes  the  idea  of  the  good  of  all. 
Individualism  or  atomism  is  forbidden. 
It  is  the  fundamental  moral  motive  be- 
cause its  reach  is  unlimited.  In  the  words 
of  Dr.  W.  T.  Harris,  **it  consolidates  all 
intelligent  will  power  into  one  power,  so 
that  the  action  of  each  assists  the  action 
of  all.  .  .  .  The  immoral  man  is  perpetu- 
ally annulling  his  own  action."  Make 
this  also  read.  The  unjust  man  is  per- 
petually annulling  his  own  action,  and 
we  have  the  root  criticism.  Conversely, 
the  just  man  is  perpetually  abetting  and 
reinforcing  his  own  action.  This  brings 
us  to  Kant's  great  law:  So  act  that  thy 
deed  will  not  contradict  itself  if  it  is  made 
the  universal  act  of  all  intelligent  beings. 
Another  philosophy  defines  justice  as 
that  which  respects  the  freedom  of  a 
moral  being  by  holding  him  absolutely 
accountable  for  his  deeds,  and  therefore 
returning  upon  him  the  exact  equivalent. 
But  however  interesting  and  even  true 
this  may  be  as  an  abstraction,  I  find  in  it 
nothing  to  induce  a  habit  of  mind  which 


64  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

Will  make  a  man  just  to  his  neighbour. 
It  ignores  the  causes  by  which  a  man  has 
been  brought  to  the  committal  of  the 
deed,  and  is  a  hard,  unbrotherly,  anti- 
social rule,  however  logical  within  itself. 

Indeed,  its  advocates  admit  that  in  prac- 
tice the  argument  is  modified  by  the  fact 
that  no  being  in  the  universe  except  a 
Perfect  Being  is  amenable  to  justice. 
The  divine  attitude  toward  a  growing 
universe,  they  say,  is  one  of  grace ^  which 
is  that  quality  which  sustains  the  imper- 
fect so  that  it  may  develop.  But  the  im- 
perfect itself  in  proportion  to  its  develop- 
ment craves  responsibility  for  its  deed, 
and  so  more  and  more  as  it  approximates 
perfection  it  demands  and  rejoices  in  jus- 
tice, because  justice  is  the  recognition  of 
its  attained  freedom. 

Briefly  in  this  philosophy  grace  repre- 
sents God's  attitude  towards  a  growing 
cosmos;  we  are  not  yet  worthy  of  jus- 
tice. And  justice  itself  briefly  is  the  rec- 
ognition of  freedom  and  maturity.  Dr. 
Harris  puts  it  that  "Grace  subserves  and 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      65 

also  limits  justice.  .  .  .  The  new  penol- 
ogy has  therefore  by  degrees  moved  for- 
ward to  a  platform  higher  than  that  of 
abstract  justice,  which  sought  merely  to 
return  his  deed  on  the  doer."  ^ 

Cosmically,  in  the  divine  relationship 
this  is  doubtless  the  final  view.  But  as  a 
working  plan,  a  habit  of  mind  for  social 
man  in  his  relations  to  man  only,  it  is 
to  my  mind  impracticable  and  unwork- 
able. In  truth,  I  am  unable  to  see  how  we 
can  talk  about  the  justice  of  God.  It  is 
better  to  avoid  these  terms  of  human 
social  relations  so  far  as  possible  in  speak- 
ing of  God.  The  question  was  once  asked 
by  a  good  Presbyterian  elder,  **How  can 
God  be  just  in  justifying  the  sinner?" 
God  is  love.  That  we  can  understand 
and  live  by.  But  he  asks  us  to  show  our 
love  to  him  and  to  our  fellows  by  being 
just  to  our  fellows.  He  wants  the  kind 
of  love  between  man  and  man  that  is 

*  ^'Penological  Papers  N.P.A."  1890.  Quoted 
by  Henderson  in  his  "Introducdon  to  Dependent, 
Defective,  and  Delinquent  Classes.** 


66  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

guided,  directed,  and  made  efficient  by 
justice. 

Now,  as  already  said,  because  man 
never  gets  a  full  hearing,  man  never  gets 
perfect  justice  from  his  fellows.  The 
information  demanded  by  absolute  jus- 
tice is  impossible  to  obtain.  Here,  then, 
is  where  mercy  comes  in.  //  one  could 
he  absolutely  just,  mercy  would  be  need- 
less. As  it  is,  mercy  is  necessary  to  fill 
the  gap.  It  is  but  the  acknowledgment 
of  our  ignorance  or  our  indifference  in 
dealing  with  our  fellows.  It  is  a  sort  of 
blind  effort  at  supplemental  justice.  The 
largest  part  of  our  debt  we  pay  in  the 
gold  of  positive  knowledge.  The  re- 
mainder we  pay  in  a  due  bill  of  mercy,  to 
be  honoured  in  gold  coin  as  divulged 
facts  warrant.  Justice  is  the  active  prin- 
ciple and  mercy  is  residual  and  supple- 
mental. **Too  much  mercy  is  want  of 
mercy,"  says  Tennyson.  And  Young, 
**A  God  all  mercy  is  a  God  unjust." 

Justice  is  orderly,  systematic,  intel- 
lectual, constant,  and  would  know  all; 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      67 

mercy  is  sporadic,  subservient,  apologetic, 
occasional  and  knows  nothing.  In  our 
fallible  and  ignorant  state  our  necessary 
mercy  will  sometimes  be  unjust,  but  full 
ideal  justice,  were  it  humanly  possible, 
would  have  no  need  for  mercy. 

Full  justice,  then,  is  humanly  impossible 
and  mercy  is  humanly  necessary.  But 
the  first  duty  lies  with  the  former.  It  is 
our  business  to  know.  It  has  been 
shrewdly  said,  if  we  knew  all  we  could 
pardon  all.  In  Hugo's  **Les  Misera- 
bles,"  the  Bishop  is  thus  described:  **He 
never  condemned  anything  hastily  or 
without  taking  the  circumstances  into  cal- 
culation. He  would  say,  *Let  us  look  at 
the  road  by  which  the  fault  has  come.'  " 

**He  was  indulgent  to  the  women  and 
the  poor  on  whom  the  weight  of  human 
society  presses.  He  would  say,  *The 
faults  of  women,  children,  servants,  the 
weak,  the  indigent,  and  the  ignorant  are 
the  fault  of  husbands,  fathers,  masters, 
the  strong,  the  rich,  and  the  learned.  .  .  . 
This  soul  is  full  of  darkness  and  sin  is 


68  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

committed,  but  the  guilty  person  is  not 
the  man  who  commits  the  sin,  but  he  who 
produces  the  darkness.  .  .  .  Let  us  pray 
not  for  ourselves,  but  that  our  brother 
may  not  fall  into  error  on  our  account.'  " 
Again,  **An  ugly  appearance,  a  deformity 
of  mind,  did  not  trouble  him  or  render 
him  indignant;  he  was  moved,  almost 
softened,  by  them.  It  seemed  as  if  he 
thoughtfully  sought  beyond  apparent 
life  for  the  cause,  the  explanation,  or  the 
excuse.  He  examined  without  anger, 
and  with  the  eye  of  a  linguist  deciphering 
a  palimpsest  the  amount  of  chaos  which 
still  exists  in  nature." 

The  culprit  must  be  regarded  as  a  vic- 
tim of  crime  as  well  as  a  criminal.  **A11 
attempts  at  dealing  with  criminal  prob- 
lems which  take  no  account  of  the  condi- 
tions which  tend  to  produce  the  criminal 
population  are  predestined  to  failure.^  " 

This  is  true  not  alone  of  the  criminal, 
but  of  the  offender  in  the  school  and  in 

*  Morrison,  ''Juvenile  Offenders,"  P«  41* 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      69 

the  home.  Parents  are  prone  to  punish 
without  seeing  that  what  they  punish  is 
largely  the  legitimate  fruit  of  their  own 
home  administration.  They  are  punish- 
ing the  imitations  of  and  even  a  loyalty 
or  obedience  to  themselves. 

The  inefficiency  of  our  penal  laws  is 
largely  due  to  the  fact  that  they  have 
ignored  the  individual  and  social  condi- 
tions on  which  the  movement  of  crime  de- 
pends. "The  criminal  character  of  an 
offender  is  not  always  to  be  estimated  by 
the  nature  of  the  offence.''  And  yet  how 
prone  we  are  to  punish  more  rigorously 
for  breaking  a  fifty-dollar  bit  of  Venetian 
glass  than  a  five-cent  flower  pot!  We 
spend  too  much  time  and  money  in  re- 
pressive agencies  and  too  little  in  righting 
the  conditions  which  produce  the  crimi- 
nal.   This  is  true  of  home  discipline  also. 

Parents  have  much  to  learn  from  crim- 
inology. They  are  in  a  majority  of  cases 
the  contributory  delinquents.  The  fox 
hunter's  reason,  as  Jeremy  Bentham  gives 
it,  is  that  it  is  right  that  the  criminal 


70  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

or  fox  should  have  a  little  start.  This 
instinctive  recognition  is  only  a  form  of 
admission  that  we  do  not  know  all  and 
may,  therefore,  be  unjust  if  we  are  not 
merciful.  The  conditions  which  have 
created  him  a  fox  instead  of  a  huntsman 
must  be  taken  into  account  and  allowed 
for.  Out  of  a  long  life  on  the  bench 
Justice  Brewer  declares,  **It  is  certain 
that  absolute  justice  cannot  be  adminis- 
tered by  finite  man."  Injustice  is  a  com- 
mon heritage.  It  is  because  of  this  sure- 
ness  of  injustice  that  Secretary  Hay 
wrote  to  his  pastor  that  one  ought  to  get 
more  than  he  deserves. 

It  is  worth  while  to  quote  here  a  few 
sentences  from  Justice  Brewer  of  the 
United  States  Supreme  Court  :^ 

"Justice,  absolute  justice,  requires  that 
judgment  be  measured  not  alone  by 
the  concrete  acts,  but  should  take 
into  account  the  differences  caused  by 
heredity  and  environment,  for  which 
the  individuals  are  not  responsible.     In 

*  From  The  Outlook,  June  24,  1905. 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      71 

short,  it  Is  certain  that  absolute  justice 
cannot  be  administered  by  finite  man. 
We  can  never  determine  how  much  the 
character  is  affected  by  forces  and  influ- 
ences over  which  the  alleged  criminal 
himself  has  had  no  control,  and  therefore 
we  can  never  establish  an  accurate  rela- 
tion between  his  acts  and  the  conse- 
quences thereof. 

**More  and  more  does  the  judge  appre- 
ciate the  presence  of  those  forces  and 
influences  which  in  the  truest  sense  de- 
termine the  quantity  of  guilt,  and  yet 
because  they  are  beyond  the  reach  of 
human  knowledge  are  ignored,  and  must 
be  ignored,  in  the  daily  administration 
of  the  law.  More  and  more  does  he 
realise  that  while  the  scientific  student 
may  have  the  possibility  of  certainty  as 
the  result  of  his  study,  he  as  a  judge  must 
ever  act  with  a  consciousness  that  there 
is  a  domain  into  which  he  can  never 
enter,  and  yet  a  domain  filled  with  con- 
siderations which  affect  in  the  highest 
sense  the  matter  of  perfect  justice.  .  .  . 
Can  it  be  that  that  Infinite  One  makes 
manifest  absolute  truth  in  all  the  domain 
of  the  material  world,  but  leaves  the 
realm  of  the  spiritual  forever  a  chaos  of 


72  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

uncertainty,    resulting    In   perpetual    In- 
justice to  his  highest  and  noblest  work? 

'^One  and  only  one  alternative  Is  pre- 
sented. In  some  other  time  and  place 
the  failures  of  justice  on  earth  will  be 
rectified.  Infinite  wisdom  will  there 
search  the  past  of  every  life,  measure 
with  exactness  the  Influences  of  heredity 
and  environment,  and  out  of  the  fulness 
of  that  knowledge  correct  the  errors 
which  we  are  powerless  to  prevent.  The 
Inevitable  failure  of  justice  In  this  life  Is 
an  assurance  of  a  life  to  come.  Outside 
of  the  declarations  of  revelation,  and 
putting  the  thought  I  have  presented 
one  side,  immortality  Is  but  a  possibility. 
*Over  the  river  they  beckon  to  me,'  is 
only  the  voice  of  hope.  To  that  hope 
and  that  possibility  comes  the  strong 
testimony  from  the  Inevitable  failure  of 
human  justice  as  contrasted  with  the  full 
knowledge  of  the  laws  governing  the 
material  world,  for  It  Is  abhorrent  to  our 
conceptions  of  an  Infinite  being  that  He 
should  endow  us  with  the  latter  while 
Investing  the  highest  product  of  creative 
intelligence,  the  human  soul,  with  a  mys- 
terious environment  which  no  man  can 
ever  fathom  and  which  to  the  end  of  its 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      73 

existence  will  prevent  that  soul  from 
receiving  the  exact  reward  which  is  essen- 
tial to  absolute  justice.  .   .    . 

**Forty  years  of  judicial  life,  as  varied 
as  that  which  falls  to  the  lot  of  any, 
have  given  to  me  an  answer  to  Cato's 
question.  I  have  looked  into  the  faces 
of  persons  on  trial  before  me  for  alleged 
crimes,  or  litigant  in  civil  cases,  have 
searched  every  item  of  testimony  which 
the  laws  of  evidence  allow  to  be  intro- 
duced, in  the  hope  of  gathering  there- 
from some  knowledge  of  the  influences 
which  the  past  of  heredity  and  environ- 
ment have  cast,  and  finding  but  little  to 
guide  or  instruct,  have  yielded  to  the 
necessity  of  determining  rights  on  the 
basis  of  only  the  concrete  and  visible 
facts.  I  have  been  over  and  over  again 
oppressed  with  the  limitations  of  finite 
nature,  and  longed  to  know  something 
of  those  unseen  and  unknown  influences 
which  have  brought  the  individual  to  his 
place  before  me.  Conscious  of  these 
ever-present  limitations,  I  have  asked 
whether  this  is  the  best  that  God  has 
done  for  man?  And  the  answer  which 
has  come  out  of  my  long  experience  on 
the  bench  is  that  somewhere  and  some 


74  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

time  all  the  failures  of  human  justice 
will  be  made  good.  Through  the  light 
of  the  judicial  glass  I  have  seen  the 
splendid  vision  of  immortality.  Rising 
above  the  confused,  conflicting  voices 
of  the  court-room  I  have  heard  the  ma- 
jestic and  prophetic  words  of  the  great 
apostle:  *For  this  corruptible  must  put 
on  incorruption,  and  this  mortal  must 
put  on  immortality.' 

**But  the  fact  of  immortality  is  one 
thing,  its  lesson  another.  Is  it  freighted 
with  joy  or  burdened  with  despair? 
Does  it  mean  merely  the  making  certain 
the  result  of  our  wrong-doings?  Is  It 
nothing  but  an  appeal  to  a  higher  court, 
in  which  a  more  just  sentence  will  be 
pronounced,  a  change,  as  It  were,  from 
Jeffreys  to  Sir  Matthew  Hale  ?  Will  the 
exact  pound  of  flesh  be  taken?  On  the 
even  scales  of  the  blind  goddess  will 
there  be  only  the  remorseless  weighing 
out  of  just  punishment? 

**  *Is  there  no  place 

Left  for  repentance,  none  for  pardon 
left?' 

**Must  we  look  forward  to  Immortality 
with  the  sure  and  only  expectation  that 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      75 

the  wrongs  we  have  here  concealed  will 
be  made  known,  and  the  doom  we  have 
evaded  be  cast  upon  us?  I  know 
that  in  human  courts  mercy  is  a  futile 
plea.  .   .   . 

**Only  in  an  appeal  to  the  executive  is 
there  place  for  mercy.  Pardon  is  not  a 
judicial  function.  But  in  the  great 
tribunal  of  eternity  the  same  Being  is 
both  judge  and  chief  executive." 

And  yet  in  human  relations  we  must 
make  a  distinction  between  mercy  and 
pardon,  if  pardon  is  to  be  reserved  as  an 
executive  function.  There  must  be 
mercy  in  the  law  under  which  the  judge 
acts  as  well  as  in  the  equity  without  stat- 
ute. Kames  says  a  court  of  equity  boldly 
undertakes  **to  correct  or  mitigate  the 
rigour  and  what  in  a  proper  sense  may  be 
termed  the  injustice  of  the  common  law.'' 
That  mercy,  as  has  already  been  said,  is 
the  taking  into  account  the  probable 
causes  and  influences  which  are  either 
invisible  or  beyond  our  ken.  In  the  juve- 
nile courts — and  notably  in  the  work  of 
Judge  Lindsey  of  Denver — we  find  freer 


76  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

administration  of  **justice/'  completer 
and  most  effective  as  an  educational  force 
in  the  community. 

Undoubtedly  it  is  exceedingly  difficult 
for  the  average  lawyer  to  grasp  the  real 
significance  of  justice.  With  a  case  to 
gain  and  a  reputation  for  success  in  view, 
and  indeed  as  a  victim  of  almost  inevi- 
table professionalism,  justice  comes  to 
have  for  him  a  meaning  little  beyond  that 
of  process. 

Judge  Taft  and  others  have  spoken  with 
no  uncertain  sound  to  show  how  the  ends 
of  justice  are  defeated  by  trivial,  inconse- 
quential, interminable,  technical  appeals. 
Our  judges  are  perforce  too  often  but 
**mild  moderators  of  the  game  of  chican- 
ery in  the  court-room." 

Judge  Charles  F.  Amidon,  of  the 
United  States  District  Court  of  North 
Dakota/  finds  the  fundamental  defect  of 
our  legal  administration  to  be  the  doc- 
trine that  *'where  error  is  found  preju- 

'  The  Outlook,  July  14,  1906. 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      77 

dice  will  be  presumed/'  This,  he  con- 
tends, removes  the  cause  at  once  from  the 
region  of  reality  and  fact  into  the  thin 
air  of  presumption  and  metaphysics. 
The  real  question  is  whether  error  in  pro- 
cedure has  produced  wrong  judgment. 
Otherwise,  we  put  technical  error  in  proc- 
ess above  moral  justice,  regarding  prac- 
tice above  substance.  So  numerous  and 
so  obstructive  are  appeals  growing  in  this 
country  that  Judge  Ami  don  declares  our 
administration  of  the  criminal  law  to  be 
an  unworkable  machine.  The  result  has 
been  not  only  that  criminals,  especially 
rich  criminals,  go  unpunished,  but  that 
the  sense  of  justice  has  been  impaired,  the 
meaning  of  justice  perverted,  and  the 
tone  of  social  morals  lowered  to  the  level 
of  personal  greed  and  ignored  infamy. 
It  is  when  the  average  attorney 
changes  the  terminology  of  his  thought  to 
what  he  calls  equity  that  he  approaches 
more  nearly  to  the  real  meaning  of  jus- 
tice. But  this  is  professional  and  techni- 
cal rather  than  basal  and  moral.    It  has 


78  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

been  held  by  some,  especially  the  earlier 
English  writers  on  jurisprudence,  that 
equity  mitigates  the  hardships  of  the  law 
where  the  law  errs  through  being  framed 
in  universals.  Would  it  not  be  fundamen- 
tally— that  is,  morally — truer  to  say  that 
this  is  a  function  of  mercy? 

Justice  Story  admits^  this  professional 
limitation  of  ideas  through  technicality. 
Equity  applied  to  jurisprudence,  he  says, 
is  not  as  comprehensive  as  natural  or 
moral  equity.  ^'Courts  of  equity  afford 
relief  in  regard  to  those  rights  recognised 
by  the  jurisprudence  of  the  state  where 
the  remedy  of  the  law  is  doubtful,  inade- 
quate, or  incomplete.''  They  are  courts 
of  mercy  or  a  more  liberal  and  far- 
sighted  effort  at  moral  justice. 

The  definition  of  justice  or  natural  law 
as  already  given  by  Justinian  answers, 
says  Story,  to  the  general  sense  of  equity 
as  that  which  is  founded  in  natural  jus- 
tice, in  honesty,   and  in  right.     Equity 

*  ''Commentaries  on  Equity  Jurisprudence." 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      79 

does  not  embrace  (we  are  told  by  the 
same  authority)  a  jurisdiction  so  wide 
and  extensive  as  that  which  arises  from 
these  principles  of  natural  justice.  Even 
Roman  law  left  many  matters  of  natural 
justice  wholly  unprovided  for,  from  diffi- 
culty of  framing  rules  to  meet  them  and 
from  the  doubtful  nature  of  the  policy  of 
giving  legal  sanction  to  **duties  of  im- 
perfect obligation,  such  as  charity,  grati- 
tude, and  kindness."  Again,  Aristotle 
defines  equity  as  a  better  sort  of  justice, 
which  corrects  legal  justice  where  the  lat- 
ter errs  through  being  expressed  in  a  uni- 
versal form  and  in  not  taking  account  of 
particular  cases. 

That  the  legal  mind  has  been  suffering 
through  its  technique  in  this  matter,  I 
say,  is  evident.  There  ought  not  to  be 
such  terms  as  **natural  justice"  or  "natu- 
ral law,"  much  less  ought  we  to  speak  of 
a  **better  sort  of  justice"  as  over  against 
**legal  justice."  The  truth  is  there  is  but 
one  justice,  and  that  is  simply  the  duty 
of  the  individual  as  a  member  of  society 


8o  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

to  seek  the  highest  good  of  all  other 
members  of  society.  To  this  end  he  must, 
negatively,  do  nothing  to  obstruct  the  full 
development  and  right  employment  of 
personal  powers  and  capacities  for  action 
and  enjoyment.  And,  positively,  he  must 
render  all  positive  aid  to  the  same  end. 
Anything  less  than  this  is  a  prostitution 
of  the  term  which  ought  to  be  held  sacred 
to  the  idea  and  the  ideal. 

Yet  if  we  look  back  through  the  cen- 
turies, we  find  this  lowered  ideal  through 
the  technique  of  the  bench  and  bar.  In 
the  codes  of  Henry  I.,  of  England,  for 
instance,  the  differing  grades  of  office 
bearers  had  different  jurisdictions.  The 
power  of  life  and  death,  belonging  to  the 
greater  lords  of  franchises,  exercised  ^ 
haute  justice,  while  the  lords  of  less  dig- 
nity exercised  a  lower  justice.^  The  dis- 
tinction is  intelligible  but  derogatory. 

The  classification  of  crimes  and  the  dif- 
ference of  jurisdiction  is  right,  of  course, 

*  Stubbs,    ''Lectures  on  Early  English  History," 
edited  by  Hassall. 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      8i 

but  the  emasculating  of  the  word  jus- 
tice by  using  it  simply  as  a  name  for  a 
form  of  legal  action  has,  without  doubt, 
confused  the  public  mind  and  lowered  the 
standard  of  this  fundament  of  public  and 
even  of  private  morals. 

One  has  only  to  read  the  daily  papers 
to  see  how  the  word  ^^justice"  has  been 
stripped  of  its  vitality  and  controlling 
significance.  A  man  goes  to  a  **court  of 
justice"  to  get  the  better  of  his  neigh- 
bour often  through  mere  legal  trickery  or 
technicality,  and  imagines  that  he  is  seek- 
ing justice.  Legal  conditions  may  abso- 
lutely forbid  justice  to  either  party  to  the 
dispute.  The  law  may  be  fulfilled,  while 
justice  is  travestied. 

The  same  association  of  the  word  "jus- 
tice" with  legal  procedure  has  also  be- 
gotten the  idea  that  justice  is  a  matter 
of  punishment  or  reward.  This  obliter- 
ates that  larger  sense  of  the  word,  which 
demands  of  each  one  a  rigorous  interest 
in  his  neighbour's  welfare,  as  a  part  of 
the  common  weal  of  society,  without  ref- 


82  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

erence  to  legislative  enactments  or  court 
orders. 

As  an  instance,  take  a  reporter's  account 
of  the  apprehension  and  trial  of  a  Phila- 
delphia kidnapping  case.  After  stating 
that  the  case  was  **railroaded^' with  great 
celerity,  the  news  column  says,  **Nothing 
was  allowed  to  interfere  with  the  inflict- 
ing of  justice  upon  the  man  who  had  de- 
liberately brought  days  and  nights  of 
anguish  to  the  parents  of  a  little  child." 
Here  we  find  the  too  prevailing  bias  that 
justice  is  vindictive  and  retributive.  So 
It  may  be ;  but  the  term  is  lowered  when 
It  Is  used  as  a  synonym  for  punishment, 
or  for  anything  but  equity  or  fairness. 

The  distinctions  between  justice,  natural 
and  legal,  and  equity  as  made  by  the 
courts  is  wholly  technical.  But  the  words 
are  In  the  root  meaning  the  same,  and  are 
the  equivalent  of  our  English  word 
**falr."  Luther  Is  wrong  when  he  says 
**the  strictest  justice  may  be  the  greatest 
Injustice;  there  must  be  not  law,  but 
equity." 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      83 

If  we  go  back  to  origins,  we  find  that 
the  root  of  ^'justice"  is  yu,  to  bind;  of 
**equity,"  eka,  one;  of  ^'fairness,"  pak, 
to  bind  (whence  also  pact,  compact,  and 
peace).  The  basal  idea  in  these  three 
words  is  that  of  a  binding  together  in 
unity.  Here  again  we  see  that  justice, 
equity,  or  fairness  is  the  essential  liga- 
ture of  society,  the  bond  of  surety,  and 
the  morality  of  peace.  Luther  meant 
right.  But  we  must  not  admit  that  it  is 
possible  to  be  just  to  one  if  that  requires 
injustice  elsewhere. 

These  terms,  one  or  all,  are  the  social 
keynote,  the  essence  of  Christianity,  as 
we  find  it  especially  in  the  Gospel  of 
John — the  Gospel  preeminently  also  of 
love.     Justice  is  methodised  love. 

It  has  been  said  that  jurisprudence  or 
legal  science  can  no  longer  be  called  the 
science  of  rights  but  the  science  of  human 
relations.  This  comes  back  to  the  propo- 
sition of  infancy.  When  human  rela- 
tions are  realised  by  the  child,  rights  and 
duties  become  the  two  aspects  of  a  con- 


84  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

trolling  sentiment.  This  develops  as 
fairness  or  justice. 

The  world  has  never  seen  a  more  impor- 
tant movement  toward  the  substitution  of 
the  principle  of  justice  for  a  formal  rule 
of  procedure  than  in  the  establishment  of 
the  juvenile  court  as  an  institution  of 
government.^ 

The  editor  of  the  Berlin  Lokal 
Jnzeiger,  Herr  von  Kupfer,  when  on  a 
visit  to  the  United  States  in  1904,  said 
that  the  most  interesting  phase  of  New 
York  life  was  the  care  bestowed  on  the 
wayward  or  unfortunate  children  and 
youth.  **The  idea  of  a  children's  court," 
he  says,  **strikes  one  as  novel,  new  to  me, 
at  least."  Its  educative  value  is  preemi- 
nent, because  it  has  an  eye  single  to  ideal 
justice  as  the  basis  of  social  life,  and  it 
exemplifies  the  principle  in  visible,  con- 
crete acts. 

Students  of  sociology,  criminology, 
education,   and  social  reform  have   for 

*  The  juvenile  court  is  more  fully  presented 
in  Chapter  VII. 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      85 

years  been  working  in  the  direction  of 
prevention  rather  than  of  mere  suppres- 
sion of  evil.  It  has  become  apparent  that 
as  mothers  and  fathers  are  a  principal 
cause  of  unruly  children,  that  as  teachers 
and  school  management  are  a  fruitful 
cause  of  backwardness,  as  well  as  of  posi- 
tive arrested  development,  so,  courts  and 
penal  institutions  are  producers  of  crimi- 
nals. 

Against  these  vicious  tendencies  of  sup- 
posed disciplinary  agencies  have  come 
the  children's  aid  and  protective  societies, 
the  anti-child-labour  movement,  and  the 
juvenile  courts.  Along  with  this  has 
grown  the  conception  of  the  contribu- 
tory delinquency  of  parents  as  a  cause  of 
youthful  delinquency  recognised  by 
statute. 

Judge  Lindsey,  of  Denver,  the  unique 
hero  of  justice,  looks,  as  did  Hugo's 
Bishop,  at  the  road  by  which  the  deed 
came.  He  takes  into  account  the  influ- 
ences out  of  which  the  crime  was  begot- 
ten.    His  aim,  in  short,  is  the  ideal  of 


86  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

justice,  because  it  mercifully  takes  into 
account  everything  that  is  humanly  pos- 
sible to  consider  as  causative  and  con- 
structive. The  result  is,  Judge  Lindsey 
finds  little  real  criminality  among  chil- 
dren, even  though  he  finds  much  law- 
breaking.  The  distinction  is  vital,  and 
when  people  have  learned  to  think  jus- 
tice, when  they  have,  through  this  single 
moral  Ideal,  become  discriminate,  we 
shall  sight  the  oncoming  era  of  peace  and 
virtue. 

In  the  retrospect :  justice  is  the  basis  of 
the  social  life.  As  between  man  and 
man  it  is  the  universal,  the  unerring 
moral  guide.  It  is  formulated  charity; 
love  in  economic  action.  It  is  the  essence 
of  social  unity,  the  ground  plan  of 
brotherhood.  It  preserves  to  society  the 
full  value  of  each  individual,  and  to  each 
individual  the  full  value  of  his  member- 
ship in  society.  Every  act  that  limits  the 
action  of  another  without  adding  to  the 
general  good  is  an  act  of  injustice. 

Justice  is  teleological,   large  visioned, 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      87 

seeing  all  of  life  in  each  act  of  life.  It  is 
a  view-of-the-world.  It  thinks  things 
through.  It  considers  how  the  present 
came  to  be  what  it  is  and  what  will  be. 
Justice  in  the  best  sense  is  preventive,  for- 
mative, and  constructive ;  while  secondar- 
ily it  is  repressive,  corrective,  retributive, 
re-formative. 

No  man  knows  enough  to  be  perfectly 
just,  but  he  will  grow  in  knowledge  under 
the  rule  of  the  ideal  of  justice  as  a  work- 
ing theory.  He  will  find  it  a  perpetual 
spur  and  challenge  to  his  thoroughness 
and  his  courage.  Mercy  is  love's  apol- 
ogy for  the  injustice  that  grows  out  of 
our  ignorance.  The  moment  we  say 
mercy  is  anything  but  love's  apology  for 
its  limitations  and  unwisdom,  we  are 
loosing  our  hold  on  justice  as  the  fixed 
basis  of  social  life.  We  are  putting  jus- 
tice into  the  Umbo  of  the  duties  of  imper- 
fect obligation.  It  is  because  we  have 
done  this  that  justice  has  been  so  traves- 
tied. 

We  properly  resort  to  mercy  because  on 


88  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

the  one  hand  we  are  so  ignorant  of  the 
causes  and  conditions  of  any  one  act,  and 
on  the  other  hand,  because  we  know  so 
well  that  every  individual  is  so  largely 
indebted  to  or  is  the  victim  of  social  and 
natal  heredity  as  well  as  to  his  immediate 
environment.  Mercy  is  therefore  a  kind 
of  supplemental  justice — love's  struggle 
to  be  fair. 

Justice  as  a  duty  is  the  guaranteeing  to 
every  one  the  right  to  the  development  of 
his  capacities  and  his  powers  for  action 
and  enjoyment  so  far  as  they  contribute 
to  the  social  efficiency.  Justice  is  preemi- 
nently the  virtue  of  the  will.  It  de- 
mands absolute  self-control,  for  it  re- 
quires the  suspended  judgment,  incessant 
revision,  and  right  of  choice.  It  is  the 
agent  of  freedom.  It  has  been  said  that 
the  whole  possible  scope  of  human  ambi- 
tion is  the  satisfaction  of  being  heard. 
Justice  grants  a  universal  hearing. 

Justice,  equity,  and  fairness  are  to  all 
intents  and  purpose  one.  They  stand  for 
human  mutuality,  unity,  and  the  highest 


MEANING  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  JUSTICE      89 

efficiency  before  God.  They  stand  ready 
to  invest  sympathy,  pity,  kindness,  benev- 
olence, charity,  and  love  with  that  clear- 
eyed  wisdom,  intellectual  industry,  and 
brave  energy  which  give  them  their  full 
value  in  the  cabinet  of  virtues.  And  they 
stand  for  the  subordination  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  the  social  order. 

Justice  is  a  mode  of  morals  actuated  by 
a  constant  and  unswerving  desire  to  ren- 
der unto  every  one  his  own  in  the 
larger   interest   of   the   common   good. 


UNIVERSALITY     AND     PERSISTENCE     OF 
THE  SENSE  OF  JUSTICE 

More  than  a  century  ago,  that  dynamic 
genius  of  the  French  Revolution,  Dan- 
ton,  said  of  his  king,  Louis  XVI,  '*We 
have  no  right  to  be  his  judges,  it  is  true; 
well,  we  will  kill  him."  This  declaration 
of  the  man  who  had  been  the  Minister  of 
Justice  appears  to  me  to  epitomise  the 
whole  moral  problem  of  man. 

First,  here  is  the  natural  obeisance  to 
right  and  the  irrepressible  desire  to  be 
thought  right,  and  next,  there  is  the  sur- 
render to  the  antagonistic  impulse  or 
passion  of  the  time.  In  one  degree  or 
another  this  is  the  history  of  every  one 
of  us — oscillation,  vacillation,  lack  of 
focus,  unstable  anchorage,  neglected 
orientation.     Not  that  we  are  all  alike, 


THE   SENSE   OF  JUSTICE  91 

for  With  some  the  perception  of  what  is 
right  toward  others  in  any  concrete  situa- 
tion is  clearer  and  the  habit  of  tenacity 
stronger ;  while  with  others  the  surrender 
is  easier. 

There  can  be  no  question  about  the  nat- 
ural universal  desire  to  be  thought  right. 
Men  differ  very  much  as  to  what  right 
is,  and  as  to  the  ways  of  being  or  doing 
right.  But  it  is  always  the  theoretical 
fixed  point  in  their  thinking.  They  meas- 
ure themselves  as  near  to  it  or  far  from 
it.  They  often  prefer  the  wrong,  but 
they  try  to  make  themselves  and  others 
think  the  wrong  is  the  right.  This  is 
true  of  the  pirate,  the  bandit,  the  Sultan, 
and  the  persecuting  churchman.  The 
vision  is  defective.  Much  that  passes  for 
sin  in  theological  codes  is  simple  igno- 
rance, unconscious  imitation,  short  or 
blurred  moral  vision,  lack  of  imagina- 
tion, supposed  heredity,  or  real  social  in- 
heritance. Otherwise  theology  itself 
must  be  sinful,  for  it  cannot  all  be  right 
— to     say    nothing     of    our    strained, 


92  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

warped,  self-interested,  unimaginative, 
prosaic  interpretations  of  Scripture. 
This  is  not  to  excuse  error  or  guilt,  but 
rather  to  give  it  its  proper  location  in 
order  that  we  may  not  only  correct  and 
reform  aright,  but  construct  and  direct 
new  life  aright. 

The  moral  discernment  of  right,  when 
it  takes  the  form  of  justice,  in  the  child  is 
the  least  obstructed  and  the  clearest. 
We  may  well  doubt  whether  it  is  ever 
really  extinguished,  however  befogged  it 
may  become  by  convention  and  the  selfish 
struggle  of  life. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  this  chapter  to  show 
by  illustrative  examples  how  variously 
the  sense  of  justice  manifests  itself  from 
early  childhood  upward,  and  also  how 
and  why  this  primal  virtue  is  at  once  uni- 
versally sensed  and  rarely  practised.  We 
have  cited  Danton  as  the  type — the  clear 
vision  befogged  for  the  moment  and  the 
surrender  to  the  immediate  passion. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  case  of 
the  little  girl  with  the  kindergarten  beads 


THE   SENSE   OF  JUSTICE  93 

— her  clear  conception  both  of  her  own 
right  and  of  her  duty  to  her  father.  Add 
to  that  now  the  case  of  a  little  boy  of 
five  years  passing  a  comment  on  a  tourna- 
ment or  series  of  contests  between  the 
guests  of  two  rival,  yet  very  friendly, 
summer  hotels.  The  first  match  was  in 
bowling,  the  second  in  tennis.  The  house 
of  which  the  youngster  was  a  guest 
gained  the  bowling  contest.  Amid  the 
loyal  huzzahs  the  little  fellow  philoso- 
phised: *^I  think  it  was  nice  for  us  to 
beat  at  bowling  and  I  think  it  would  be 
nice  for  the  others  to  beat  at  tennis — for 
that  would  be  polite.'* 

The  child  was  groping  among  the  ele- 
ments of  social  ethics.  What  he  called 
politeness  was  his  budding  sense  of  equity 
both  as  a  right  and  as  a  duty — the  two 
cannot  be  separated  as  motif  In  social 
morals,  and  at  bottom  there  Is  no  other. 
This  youngster  was  fast  coming  Into  that 
perception  of  human  relations  with 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  the  moral  sense 
emerges. 


94  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

A  certain  mother,  offended  by  her  boy's 
conduct,  gave  him  the  alternative  either 
to  do  as  she  wished  or  to  leave  the  room. 
After  a  moment's  reflection  the  boy  re- 
plied, 'That's  fair!"  President  Eliot, 
noting  this  household  incident,  said,  **I 
would  give  more  for  that  judicial  com- 
ment— for  its  effect  on  the  boy's  later  life 
than  for  any  amount  of  accurate  figur- 
ing." This  boy  was  older,  farther  along 
in  his  moral  development,  than  the  child 
previously  quoted.  Fairness  had  become 
more  fundamental  as  a  working  princi- 
ple than  mere  obedience.  His  duty  to 
act,  even  against  his  inclination,  was  con- 
ditioned upon  the  recognition  of  his  free 
will  and  right  of  choice.  That  he  was 
willing  to  act  when  the  situation  was 
just,  was  of  more  consequence  to  him 
than  the  conquest  of  arithmetic.  Jus- 
tice was  the  one  voice  that  he  would  obey. 

This  boy  was  not  an  ethical  philoso- 
pher, not  precocious,  not  unusual.  Youth 
is  exacting  in  the  domain  of  the  univer- 
sal.   The  learned  man  in  Kant  puzzled 


THE   SENSE   OF  JUSTICE  95 

over  justice  in  relation  to  kindness;  the 
child  in  Kant  visioned  the  law:  So  act 
that  thy  deed  will  not  contradict  itself  if 
it  is  made  the  universal  act  of  all  intelli- 
gent beings. 

Miss  Rye  of  the  Howard  Association, 
London,  tells  of  a  little  girl,  child  of 
burglars,  who,  on  being  received  into  an 
institution,  began  to  steal,  and  was 
threatened  with  a  whipping.  Bursting 
into  tears  the  child  wailed,  **Where  I 
corned  from  they  whipped  me  if  I  didn't 
steal ;  and  now  you  are  going  to  whip  me 
because  I  do."  The  wrong  of  stealing 
had  not  occurred  to  her,  but  there  was  an 
unfairness  somewhere  toward  her,  which 
was  at  once  self-evident  and  cruel. 

There  is  deep  significance  here  for  us 
all.  Children  in  the  best  of  homes  and 
in  the  best  of  schools  are  not  yet  fully 
conventionalised  or  socialised  beings. 
But  they  have  become  so  in  spots. 
Hence,  they  do  not  know  the  reason  for 
much  of  the  privation,  suppression,  and 
punishment  which  they  suffer.    But  they 


96  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

do  know  that  it  is  wickedly  unfair  to  treat 
them  as  though  they  had  the  experience 
and  the  formed  habits  of  an  adult.  They 
do  not  reason  this  out,  but  they  feel  it 
out.  All  this,  however,  works  toward 
the  injury  of  that  original  sense  of  jus- 
tice which  ought  to  be  preserved  to  them 
for  society's  sake  if  for  no  other  reason. 
Some  years  ago  Professor  John  Dewey 
in  order  to  get  concretely  at  the  theory  of 
ends  and  motives  which  actually  control 
thinking  upon  moral  subjects,  asked  one 
hundred  students  to  state  some  typical 
early  moral  experience  of  his  own,  relat- 
ing, say,  to  obedience,  honesty,  and 
truthfulness;  and  the  impression  left  by 
the  outcome  upon  each  upon  his  own 
mind,  especially  the  impression  as  to  the 
reason  for  the  virtue  in  question.  With- 
out following  the  results  in  detail,  let  us 
note  this  one  item:  **A  sense  of  justice 
/  seems  to  have  been  the  first  distinctly 
moral  feeling  aroused  in  many.  This, 
not  on  account  of  the  wrong  which  the 
child  did  others,  but  of  wrong  suffered 


THE    SENSE    OF  JUSTICE  97 

in  being  punished  for  something  which 
seemed  perfectly  innocent  to  the  child. 
One  of  the  distinct  painful  impressions 
left  on  my  own  mind  by  the  papers  is 
the  comparative  frequency  with  which 
parents  assume  that  an  act  is  consciously 
wrong  and  punish  it  as  such,  when  in  the 
child's  mind  the  act  is  simply  psychologi- 
cal— based,  I  mean,  upon  ideas  and  emo- 
tions which,  under  the  circumstances,  are 
natural." 

One  of  the  students  remembered  being 
driven  from  a  field  where  he  was  picking 
berries,  and  so  led  to  question  the  right  of 
others  to  be  so  exclusive.  But  he  remarks 
that  the  effectual  appeal  always  lay  in  his 
being  led  to  put  himself  in  the  place  of 
others.  This,  together  with  what  Dr. 
Dewey  says  of  the  feeling  of  injustice, 
tallies  with  what  is  claimed  in  the  third 
chapter  to  be  the  genesis  of  the  sense  of 
justice  in  young  children.  It  is  a  com- 
bined sentiment  of  rights  and  duties  aris- 
ing out  of  the  proprietary  sense  by  aid 
of  the  imagination  as  affected  by  rela- 


9S  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

tions  to  the  human  world.     Morality  lies 
not  in  things  but  in  relations. 

Who  is  there  that  does  not  carry  in 
vivid  recollection  some  act  of  injustice 
toward  him  in  his  childhood  by  some  one 
in  authority  over  him?  Whatever  else 
IS  forgotten,  that  at  least  rankles  on.  I 
well  remember  being  marked  for  a  yell 
in  a  school-room.  Our  teacher  was  a  man 
of  distinction  in  science,  a  member  of  the 
Society  of  Friends,  and  not  otherwise  un- 
friendly. The  deed  was  done  by  a  boy 
directly  back  of  me,  who  had  not  the  jus- 
tice to  offer  himself  as  the  real  delin- 
quent. I  protested,  but  was  given  no 
hearing.  My  protest  extended  to  my 
father,  who  reinforced  my  contention  of 
innocence,  but  without  avail.  Many 
years  after,  when  a  lecturer  myself,  I  was 
startled  to  see  my  old  professor  in  the 
front  row  of  my  audience.  The  oppor- 
tunity was  irresistible.  Immediately  on 
closing  I  made  myself  agreeable  to  him 
by  rehearsing  the  long  bygone  affair  of 
injustice. 


THE   SENSE   OF  JUSTICE  99 

Of  course  he  did  not  remember  it.  But 
I  had  at  last  got  as  **even"  as  it  was  pos- 
sible to  get,  for  he  had  been  in  the 
benches  and  I  in  the  chair  on  this  night, 
and  the  reprimand  was  left  to  work  it- 
self out  in  his  own  soul  by  simple  refer- 
ence to  it — all  good  natured  as  it  was. 
Justice  was  satisfied  with  its  "hearing." 

I  think  I  have  never  told  this  story  to 
any  one  without  my  getting  the  reply,  **I 
have  an  experience  very  similar  in  my 
own  life."  So  common  is  this  persistent 
memory  of  childhood's  suffering  from  a 
denied  hearing  of  its  case,  or  an  unjust 
suspicion  or  punishment,  that  it  seems 
scarcely  worth  while  to  record  any  fur- 
ther instances. 

Many  persons  remember  how  strongly 
tempted  they  were  to  run  away  from 
home  in  childhood,  and  often  because  of 
some  unfair  attitude  or  action  against 
them.  The  sense  of  being  misunderstood 
is  most  common,  and  this  is  but  the  result 
of  the  gag  of  injustice  that  denies  the 
right  to  a  hearing. 


loo  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

Here  is  a  typical  case  from  the  London 
Spectator: 

Perhaps  my  experience  on  this  subject 
may  interest  some  of  your  readers.  When 
I  was  a  little  girl  of  about  five,  I  was,  to- 
gether with  my  sisters,  being  brought  up 
by  a  Puritan  lady  of  very  strict,  austere 
views.  One  day  there  was  a  great  row 
in  the  house.  A  peach  which  was  ripen- 
ing on  the  garden  wall,  and  which  we 
had  been  forbidden  to  touch,  was  found 
to  have  been  pinched  and  somebody's 
thumb-nail  dug  into  it.  Suspicion  fell  on 
me,  and  was  confirmed  by  my  nail  appear- 
ing to  fit  the  mark.  I  had  had  nothing 
to  do  with  it,  but  I  was  shaken,  whipped, 
and  locked  up  with  nothing  to  eat  except 
some  bread  and  water  and  a  cold  rice- 
pudding,  until  such  time  as  I  confessed 
my  fault. 

How  well  I  remember  all  my  misery  and 
the  long  weary  hours,  until  the  brilliant 
idea  occurred  to  me  to  confess  the  act, 
innocent  as  I  was,  and  get  liberated.  I 
rushed  to  the  door,  kicked  it,  and 
screamed  out  my  penitence  with  sobs  and 
tears,  that  were  as  much  rage  and  hunger 
as  anything  else.     But  I  had  not  looked 


THE   SENSE   OF  JUSTICE  loi 

far  enough.    "I  was  certain  she  had  done 

it,"  exclaimed  Mrs.  F triumphantly, 

"and  to  think  of  the  way  she  denied  it 
with  the  most  innocent  face!  Go  back 
in  there,  you  wicked  little  girl,  and  think 
of  what  happens  to  such  children  as  you." 
The  key  was  again  turned  in  the  lock,  and 
I  was  left  with  the  rice-pudding,  now  fast 
growing  slimy  and  mouldy-looking.  By 
this  time  my  sufferings  had  touched  the 
conscience  of  the  real  delinquent,  the 
kitchen-maid,  who  at  this  point  confessed 
it  was  she  who  had  pinched  the  forbidden 
fruit. 

You  would  have  thought  that  at  least 
some  reparation  would  have  been  made 
to  me  for  all  I  had  so  unjustly  suffered. 

Not  at  all.    Mrs.  F said  I  must  be 

an  artful  limb  of  the  devil.  I  was 
whipped  again,  worse  than  before,  and 
when  finally  I  was  admitted  back  to  the 
family  circle  it  was  with  a  large  placard 
with  '*Liar"  written  on  it  fastened  to  my 
back.     I  have  often  wondered  whether 

Mrs.  F had  the  faintest  idea  of  the 

chaos  of  fury  and  bewilderment  that 
filled  my  soul.  I  do  not  think  so.  I  be- 
lieve she  honestly  thought  she  was  train- 
ing us  right,  and  I  remember  that  when  in 


loz  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

after  years  I  met  her  again  she  expressed 
herself  as  having  been  always  so  very 
fond  of  me,  and  described  the  pleasure 
it  had  given  her  to  guide  my  infant  steps 
into  the  path  they  should  go. 

Here  is  a  bit  of  personal  reminiscence 
from  the  pen  of  Edward  Bok : 

During  my  early  boyhood  my  father 
was  led  into  some  gold-mining  invest- 
ment, and  at  the  dinner-table  he  discussed 
the  fact  with  my  mother.  Of  course  I 
was  at  once  alert.  Boylike,  I  caught 
nothing  of  the  conversation  except  the 
single  fact  of  the  gold  mine.  Naturally, 
I  felt  that  my  father  could  do  nothing  by 
halves,  and  so,  to  my  mind,  my  father 
had  bought  an  entire  gold  mine.  Next 
day  I  duly  conveyed  this  precious  piece  of 
information  to  my  playmates.  To  their 
credit,  I  must  say,  they  received  it  at  first 
with  some  incredulity,  but  finally  my  elo- 
quence won  the  day  and  they  were  con- 
vinced I  All  but  one  boy ;  he  pooh-poohed 
the  whole  idea.  He  was  older  than  I, 
but  that  made  no  difference.  He  must 
be  convinced.  My  father's  capacity  to 
buy  a  gold  mine,  or  a  whole  city  of  gold 


THE   SENSE   OF   JUSTICE  103 

mines  if  he  wanted  them,  must  be  estab- 
lished in  that  boy's  mind.  And  so  I  set 
to  work.  Diligently  I  argued  every 
phase  of  the  question  with  that  boy,  but 
somehow  or  other  he  wouldn't  have  it. 
However,  I  was  not  discouraged.  See- 
ing that  I  could  not  argue  it  into  him, 
I  proceeded  to  literally  pound  it  into  him. 
My  father's  reputation,  I  felt,  must  be 
established,  no  matter  what  the  cost.  I 
was  engaged  in  this  exhilarating  form  of 
argument  when  the  owner  of  the  gold 
mine  himself  appeared  on  the  scene,  and — 
evidently  seeing  that  I  was  getting  much 
the  worse  of  the  argument — seizing  my 
ear,  disentangled  me  from  the  embrace  of 
my  opponent,  and  delivering  one  or  two 
**love-pats"  upon  me  himself,  marched 
me  home  1  I  do  not  think  I  blamed  my 
father  so  much  for  extricating  me  from 
the  warm  embrace  of  my  unconvincible 
opponent  as  I  did  for  his  failure  to  ask 
me,  after  we  had  reached  home,  the 
reason  of  his  finding  me  in  such  close 
quarters  1  Instead  of  instituting  inquiry 
he  simply  constituted  himself  a  court  of 
action. 

The  child's  sense  of  moral  evenness,  or 


I04  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

equity  is  well  illustrated  in  the  follow- 
ing:' 

A  boy  of  seven,  told  not  to  carry  his 
basin  of  sand  to  a  preempted  corner  of 
the  porch,  did  so  a  second  time.  He  was 
warned  that  the  next  time  would  be  under 
penalty.  A  week  later  (a  week  during 
which  his  mind  had  been  distracted  by  a 
household  calamity) ,  he  was  found  in  the 
same  spot  with  his  sand.  His  mother's 
reproving  eyes  brought  him  to  his  feet. 
Without  a  word  of  self-justification  he 
walked  beside  her  into  the  house.  After 
a  trying  interview,  he  slipped  one  sandy 
hand  into  hers,  saying,  **Truly,  mamma, 
I  forgot,  but  I  thought  you  ought  to 
whip  me,  as  you  promised ;  that  was  only 
fair.'' 

A  little  girl,  less  than  three  years  old, 
childishly  fond  of  unripe  apples,  was 
warned  and  guarded,  but  not  always  suc- 
cessfully. Finally  the  threat  of  punishment 
was  uttered,  together  with  a  prophecy  of 
illness.  The  next  day  she  came  and  laid 
an  apple-core  in  her  mother's  lap.  **I  ate 
an  apple,  mamma.    You  may  punish  me 

*  Reported  by  Rebecca  Smylie  in  The  Sunday 
School  Times. 


THE   SENSE   OF  JUSTICE  105 

now,  but  I  know  God  won't  let  me  get 
sick.  He  knows  a  spanking  is  enough  for 
one  little  apple." 

A  child  told  that  a  specific  punishment 
will  follow  a  certain  course  of  action  feels 
that  he  is  free  to  choose  between  the  two. 
Frequently  he  is  intercepted  in  his  de- 
signs, but  gets  the  punishment  as  if  he 
had  attained  the  forbidden  delight. 
This,  to  the  child  mind,  is  manifestly  un- 
fair. **You  didn't  say  you'd  whip  me  if 
I  tried  to  go  swimming,"  protested  a  de- 
tected runaway.  **I  was  willing  to  take 
a  whipping  if  I  got  a  swim." 

A  former  headmaster  of  Rugby  (later, 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury)  is  spoken 
of  in  a  Rugby  boy's  letter  as  being  "a 
beast,  but  a  just  beast."  ^  This  was  com- 
plimentary. 

After  the  **pardon"  of  Dreyfus,  his 
heroic  defender,  Zola  (already  referred 
to),   thus  wrote  to  Madame  Dreyfus: 

"It  is  revolting  to  obtain  pity  when  one 
asks  for  justice,  and  all  seems  to  have 
been  preconcerted  in  order  to  bring  about 
^  Reported  by  Prmcipal  Philips,  of  West  Chester,  Pa 


lo6  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

this  last  iniquity.  The  judges,  wishing 
to  strike  the  innocent  in  order  to  save  the 
guilty,  seek  refuge  in  an  act  of  horrible 
hypocrisy,  which  they  call  mercy." 

George  Fox,  in  prison  for  conscience' 
sake,  refused  to  leave  his  disgusting  in- 
carceration by  the  proffered  king's  par- 
don because  he  had  done  no  wrong.  He 
would  not  accept  pardon  for  justice. 

This  unextinguished  sense  of  fairness  or 
equity,  this  earliest  born  sense  of  justice, 
has  not  been  lost  even  in  the  criminal 
classes,  but  it  has  become  limited  and  per- 
verted. Indeed,  these  classes  are  chiefly 
the  product  of  the  world's  lack  of  justice. 

Note  a  few  cases  reported  by  Mac- 
Donald.  A  thief  at  Milan  said,  **I  do 
not  steal,  I  only  take  from  the  rich  that 
which  they  have  too  much  of;  and  do  the 
merchants  do  otherwise?  Why,  then, 
should  I  be  accused  and  they  left  undis- 
turbed?" Another  said,  **I  steal,  it  is 
true,  but  never  less  than  2000  francs ;  to 
attack  so  large  an  amount  seems  to  me 
less  a  theft  than  a  speculation.'*    A  third 


THE   SENSE   OF  JUSTICE  107 

said,  **If  I  had  not  stolen  I  could  not  have 
enjoyed  myself;  I  could  not  even  have 
lived;  we  are  necessarily  in  the  world; 
without  us  what  need  would  there  be  of 
judges,  lawyers,  gaolers?  It  is  we  who 
give  them  a  living."  A  fourth  said,  "We 
are  necessary.  God  put  us  in  the  world 
to  punish  the  stingy  and  bad  rich ;  we  are 
a  species  of  plague  from  God.  And  be- 
sides, without  us  what  would  the  judges 
do?''  A  fifth,  justifying  the  use  of  vio- 
lence in  robbery,  said,  "We  bound  them 
for  our  own  safety,  as  the  gaoler  does 
when  he  puts  the  handcuffs  on  us ;  it  was 
their  turn — to  each  his  turn." 

Dr.  MacDonald  cites  these  cases^  to 
show  that  the  moral  sense  of  criminals 
IS  "radically  defective"  or  that  moral 
sense  is  "incomprehensible  to  them."  I 
am  citing  them  to  show  that  while  the 
moral  sense  of  the  criminal  is  decidedly 
defective,  moral  sense  is  by  no  means 
wanting  in,  or  incomprehensible  to  him. 

*  "Criminology,"  p.    159  ff. 


io8  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

Every  one  of  these  men  has  a  sense  of 
justice.  Every  one  wants  to  be  thought 
right;  each  one  wants  to  think  himself 
right.  To  this  end  he  employs  a  sophis- 
try and  a  process  of  self-deception  really 
no  more  absurd  than  do  thousands  of  our 
''respectable  neighbours''  who  go  to  their 
daily  tasks  and  walk  the  streets  with 
heads  up  in  fearless  confidence. 

Observe  also  the  note  of  reciprocity,  of 
equity,  as  much  as  to  say  that  even  if 
they  are  wrong,  they  are  little  different 
from  their  legal  accusers.  Some  indeed 
claim  that  they  are  discharging  a  duty  to 
society,  and  to  judges  and  lawyers  in  par- 
ticular. Some  moral  sense,  however  er- 
ratic, is  writ  large  in  the  confessions  of 
these  men,  who  are  but  types. 

The  English  criminologist,  W.  Douglas 
Morrison,  speaking  of  the  homes  of  the 
children  of  the  Liverpool  Industrial 
School,  says,  ''I  have  been  greatly  aston- 
ished, when  talking  to  the  children,  to 
find  what  a  vast  amount  of  vice  and  in- 
decency they  had  listened  to  without  be- 


THE    SENSE    OF  JUSTICE  109 

ing  aware  that  there  was  anything  wrong 
in  it." 

I  think  it  is  safe  to  say  that  every  one  of 
them  carries  in  his  untutored  breast  a 
sense  of  fairness,  however  inoperative  it 
may  be ;  and  here  is  the  point  of  contact 
for  the  basis  of  moral  appeal. 

**It  is  the  feeling  of  injustice,"  says  Car- 
lyle,  **that  is  insupportable  to  all  men." 
It  is  man's  injustice  to  man  that  makes 
so  many  malefactors  with  such  blunted 
moral  sensibilities,  and  with  so  much  sat- 
isfaction in  their  own  sophistry  and  self- 
deception. 

The  man  who  cheerfully  confessed  to 
having  stolen  gold  bars  from  the  mint 
maintained  to  the  end  of  his  incarcera- 
tion that  the  government  had  been  unjust 
to  him  and  morally  owed  him  thousands 
of  dollars  of  back  pay.  The  claim  was 
absurd,  but  it  was  made  in  the  name  of 
common  fairness  for  all  that,  unfair  as 
he  himself  was  in  committing  the  theft. 

It  is  from  the  study  of  the  extremes  that 
we  arrive  most  quickly  at  basal  facts. 


no  THE  CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

Criminals  may  be  taken  as  the  type  of 
extreme  mental  states,  and  we  may  there- 
fore look  a  little  further  at  the  finding 
of  criminologists. 

As  we  pursue  this  interesting  study  two 
facts  will  become  more  and  more  evi- 
dent :  first,  that  the  original  sense  of  jus- 
tice is  seldom  or  never  wholly  obliter- 
ated ;  secondly,  that  it  has  become  weak- 
ened, warped,  and  tortured  out  of  its  own 
countenance.  We  have  seen  this  already 
in  the  cases  cited. 

The  wish  to  be  thought  right  and  to 
offer  excuses  which  are  supposed  to  jus- 
tify are  pretty  sure  to  crop  out  even  in 
the  most  blatant  criminals.  They  appear 
to  feel,  even  though  ever  so  weakly,  that 
there  must  be  a  stable  norm  of  right 
somewhere.  They  may  glory  in  their 
departure  from  it,  but  this  is  only  a  form 
of  confession  of  its  claims.  An  extreme 
case  of  this  kind  was  reported  in  the 
daily  press  not  very  long  ago.^ 

*  The  Press,  (Philadelphia)  despatch  dated 
July  12,  1906. 


THE   SENSE   OF  JUSTICE  in 

The  case  was  that  of  a  professional  man 
who  was  arrested  for  forgery.  In  the 
police  station  he  is  reported  to  have  said : 
**My  one  great  regret  in  life  is  that  I 
have  fallen  a  slave  to  the  morphine  habit, 
and  to  resist  its  use  have  failed  in  my 
ambition  to  become  the  greatest  criminal 
of  the  age.  I  glory  in  crime  and  am  a 
criminal  because  it  is  impossible  for  me 
to  be  anything  else  J' 

This  man  claimed  that  he  had  criminal 
instincts  by  heredity  and  that  this  was 
beyond  remedy.  But  observe  that  he 
had  sufficient  sense  of  right  and  sufficient 
desire  to  be  thought  right  to  offer  as  an 
excuse  for  his  wrong  his  belief  that  he 
could  not  help  it.  The  germ  of  right 
was  still  in  this  ambitious  criminal. 

Lombroso,  the  distinguished  criminol- 
ogist and  advocate  of  this  much  strained 
and,  I  believe,  untenable  heredity  theory, 
cites  the  case  of  a  man  who,  after  twenty 
years'  imprisonment,  was  visited  by  a 
spectre  or  vision  of  the  Virgin  while  in 
his  cell.    She  appointed  him  to  a  mission 


112  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

in  her  name,  and  the  man  became,  so  it  is 
reported,  a  philanthropist.  This  could 
not  have  been  but  for  the  reawakening  of 
the  original  sentiment  or  sense  of  justice, 
or  absolute  right  to  all  men. 

Again,  a  horse  thief  admitted  having 
taken  a  horse  because  the  leader  of  a 
band  could  not  be  expected  to  go  on  foot; 
but  he  denied  that  the  act  was  theft. 

MacDonald^  notes  that  thieves  consider 
a  bankrupt  worse  than  themselves.  But 
his  immunity  inflames  their  sense  of  fair- 
ness and  reacts  through  their  revenge  on 
society.  One  thief  shared  his  booty 
with  the  poor  out  of  a  confessed  sense  of 
what  he  called  natural  justice.  But  for 
the  artificial  justice  or  prescriptions  of 
law  courts  he  cared  nothing. 

MacDonald  concludes  that  the  criminal 
is  more  likely  to  think  right  than  to  feel 
right.  For  the  lack  of  the  proper  feel- 
ing the  criminal  lacks  the  will  power  to 
follow  his  idea.    Hence,  the  doctrine  of 

*  *< Criminology,"  p.  164  IF. 


THE    SENSE    OF  JUSTICE  113 

**honesty  among  thieves,"  which  Is  prac- 
tically the  sense  of  justice  with  the  emo- 
tional side  obliterated,  or,  at  least,  mis- 
directed. Of  course  this  is  not  the  true, 
efficient  sentiment  of  justice,  but  its 
degradation  to  merely  an  economic  idea. 
When  we  come,  then,  to  think  of  justice 
as  a  mode  of  education  we  must  not  omit 
the  training  of  the  feelings^  as  an  essen- 
tial to  this  aspect  of  social  reform.  The 
feelings  are  racial,  social ;  hence  their  im- 
portant function  even  in  the  highly  intel- 
lectual sentiment  of  justice.  An  idea  acts 
only  according  as  it  is  felt. 

In  Flynt  and  Walton's  *Towers  that 
Prey,"  two  criminals  are  discussing  the 
conviction  of  an  innocent  friend,  for  mur- 
der. Says  one,  **Seems  like  a  gun  can't 
do  nothin'  any  more  'thout  bein'  pinched 
for  somethin'  else."  The  other  replies, 
"I'd  sooner  be  pinched  for  what  I  didn't 
do  'n  what  I  done ;  it  riles  a  bloke's  sense 

*  See  ''The  Natural  Way  in  Moral  Training/' 
chapter  on  Nurture  by  Atmosphere,  by  Patterson 
DuBois. 


114  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

o'  justice  to  be  accused  false  and  helps 
him  put  up  a  front.''  The  innocent  con- 
vict himself  says,  "I  ain't  turnin'  soft  and 
kickin'  'bout  goin'  to  the  chair — not  me  I 
It's  up  to  me  to  sit  in  it,  that's  straight. 
An'  I've  done  enough  to  deserve  croakin' 
ten  times  over;  but,  Jackson,  it  ain't  up 
to  me  to  stand  for  the  killin'  of 
Hooper.  ...  I  don't  mind  croakin'  for 
anything  I  done,  but  I  hate  like  hell  to 
croak  for  somethin'  I  didn't." 

Very  clearly  does  the  sense  of  fairness 
come  out  in  this  incident.  The  murderer 
has  no  objections  to  his  capital  punish- 
ment, provided  the  punishment  is  for  a 
deed  which  he  has  committed.  The 
equity  would  be  all  right  had  he  done  the 
act,  and  although  he  has  escaped  punish- 
ment for  many  other  crimes,  he  is  riled 
for  this  one  miscarriage  of  judgment. 

A  criminal  telling  of  his  release  from 
the  Auburn  penitentiary  after  a  five 
years'  term  says  :^ 

*  **Thc  Autobiography  of  a  Thief,"  recorded  by 
Hutchins  Hapgood,  p.  197. 


THE    SENSE    OF  JUSTICE  115 

I  knew  that  there  was  nothing  in  a  life 
of  crime.  I  had  tested  that  well  enough. 
But  there  were  times  during  the  last 
months  I  spent  in  my  cell  when,  in  spite 
of  my  good  resolutions,  I  hated  the  out- 
side world,  which  had  forced  me  into  a 
place  that  took  away  from  me  my  man- 
hood and  strength.  I  knew  I  had  sinned 
against  my  fellow-men,  but  I  knew,  too, 
that  there  had  been  something  good  in 
me.  I  was  half  Irish,  and  about  that 
race  there  is  naturally  something  roguish ; 
and  that  was  part  of  my  wickedness. 
When  I  left  stir  I  knew  I  was  not 
capable,  after  five  years  and  some  months 
of  unnatural  routine,  of  what  I  should 
have  been  by  nature. 


It  would  appear,  then,  that,  as  claimed 
at  the  outset,  justice  is  the  earliest  moral 
feeling  to  develop  and  the  surest  to  per- 
sist through  life.  Despite  Judge  Taft's 
decision  that  the  motive  of  justice  is  natu- 
urally  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  breast,  but  ab- 
sent in  the  Porto  Rican  and  the  Filipino, 
and  despite  the  contention  in  some  quar- 
ters that  it  is  much  stronger  in  men  than 


'^ERSITY 


Il6  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

in  women,  I  believe  it  to  be  more  nearly 
universal,  can  be  counted  on  more  surely 
as  a  moral  appeal,  than  any  other  virtu- 
ous sentiment  or  instinct.  There  are 
good  reasons  why  it  might  seem  weaker, 
or  at  least  might  be  less  obvious  and 
operative  in  women  than  in  men.  But 
that  does  not  vitiate  the  main  contention 
of  universality. 

It  is  impossible  for  me  to  see  how  there 
can  be  any  difference  caused  by  sex  in  the 
spontaneous  generation  of  the  sense  of 
proprietary  rights  and  the  relation  which 
these  rights  bear  to  others.  The  rights 
and  duties  of  humanity  develop  just  as 
surely  in  one  sex  as  in  the  other.  But  it  is 
not  impossible  that  the  training  and  the 
sort  of  relation  which  men  and  women 
bear  to  the  community  may  cause  a  diver- 
gence in  the  mode  of  display  of  the  origi- 
nal sentiment,  and  even  result  in  a  greater 
or  less  degree  of  its  inoperation. 

Meredith  Townsend  in  his  book  on 
Asia  testifies  that,  *The  idea  of  justice  is 
almost  as  instinctive  as  the  idea  of  differ- 


THE    SENSE    OF  JUSTICE  117 

ence  between  right  and  wrong,  and  an 
Asiatic  submits  more  humbly  to  a  just 
sentence  than  a  European." 

So  sacred  was  the  idea  of  justice  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  that,  as  Hallam  writes, 
**the  courts  of  a  feudal  barony  or  manor 
required  neither  the  knowledge  of  posi- 
tive law  nor  the  dictates  of  natural  sagac- 
ity. In  all  doubtful  cases,  and  especially 
where  a  crime  not  capable  of  notorious 
proof  was  charged,  the  combat  was 
awarded,  and  God,  as  they  deemed,  was 
the  judge." 

That  the  sense  of  justice  or  right  and 
the  consequent  respect  for  virtue  are 
never  wholly  obliterated  from  the  degen- 
erate mind  is  the  theme  of  a  striking  pas- 
sage in  that  lofty  yet  almost  forgotten 
epic,  PoUok's  **Course  of  Time" : 

Virtue,  like  God,  whose  excellent  majesty, 
Whose  glory  virtue  Is,  is  omnipresent. 
No  being,  once  created  rational. 
Accountable,  endowed  with  moral  sense, 
.With  sapience  of  right  and  wrong  en- 
dowed, 


n«  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

And  charged,  however  fallen,  debased, 

destroyed ; 
However  lost,  forlorn,  miserable; 
In  guilt's  dark  shrouding  wrapt,  however 

thick; 
However  drunk,  delirious,  and  mad. 
With  sin's  full  cup;  and  with  whatever 

damned 
Unnatural  diligence  it  work  and  toil, 
Can  banish  virtue  from  its  sight,  or  once 
Forget  that  she  is  fair. 

The  question  now  arises  why,  if  the 
race  has  such  an  instinctive  sense  of  jus- 
tice, such  a  desire  indeed  to  be  thought 
right,  why  is  there  so  much  injustice  in 
the  world? 

The  answer  was  given  at  the  start.  In 
a  degree  we  are  all  like  Danton.  Our 
sense  of  fairness  has  been  too  little  prac- 
tised. Other  virtues,  imperfect  and  un- 
certain, have  been  too  easily  substituted 
and  magnified  for  the  cardinal  moral  reg- 
ulator. The  result  is  just  what  we  see 
to-day  in  our  civilisation.  Our  vision  is 
too  contracted  and  too  astigmatic.  We 
do  not  take  to  heart  the  truth  that  unless 


THE    SENSE    OF  JUSTICE  119 

one  understands  that  as  a  member  of  the 
body  politic,  or  institutional  life,  if  he 
fails  to  give  and  take,  defer  and  obey, 
adjust  and  correlate,  he  is  unjust,  anti- 
social, and  immoral. 

Not  that  benevolence,  generosity,  pity, 
kindness,  patience,  humility,  gratitude, 
forgiveness,  etc.,  can  have  no  place  in 
social  ethics — life  would  be  intolerable 
without  them;  but  rather  that  they  get 
their  full  value  under  the  vise  signature 
of  the  master  moral  insight  of  Justice — 
which  can  be  neither  misplaced  nor  par- 
tial nor  overdone  when  it  is  real. 

What  Christians  need  is  a  more  exact 
and  courageous  moral  discrimination  and 
feeling ;  less  sophistry ;  a  confirmed  habit 
of  thinking  things  through  to  the  ultimate 
moral  issue  and  result.  In  this  school 
Justice  is  the  headmaster;  in  this  empire 
of  universal  brotherhood  Justice  is  the 
premier  as  Love  is  the  throne. 


VI 

EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION 
OF  THE  PRINCIPLE 

Justice  is  more  than  a  basis  of  ethical 
training.  It  is  essential  to  the  full  effi- 
ciency of  all  forms  of  right  influences  of 
man  upon  man.  It  underlies  all  true  edu- 
cation as  means  and  as  end. 

Something  that  looks  like  social  reform 
or  moral  improvement  or  a  closer 
brotherhood  or  a  truer  unity  or  a  higher 
freedom  or  a  firmer  peace  can  be  accom- 
plished through  the  indefinite  motives 
that  we  call  philanthropy  and  benevo- 
lence. 

But  if  such  reform  has  been  wrought 
at  the  expense  of  a  true  equity,  it  must 
in  the  end  prove  a  delusion.  Unless  phil- 
anthropy has  confided  its  cause  to  the 
exacter  thought  and  the    even,   steady 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     121 

hand  of  justice  it  has  failed  of  its  divine 
mission.  Upon  this  distinction  moral 
education  must  focus. 

In  view  of  what  has  been  said  in  the 
foregoing  chapters — the  testimony  of 
Scripture,  of  great  minds,  of  the  child's 
instincts,  of  the  criminal's  complaint,  of 
the  trend  toward  brotherhood  and  peace, 
and  of  the  social-moral  obligation — this 
would  seem  to  be  a  truth,  simple  and  ob- 
vious enough  to  need  no  restatement. 

Yet  there  are  good  men  and  thoughtful 
men  who,  rightly  preaching  the  gospel 
of  love,  too  easily  overlook  the  fact  that 
love  can  be  unlovely  (as  Christianity 
may  be  un-Christian) ,  but  that  love's  jus- 
tice or  justice-love  can  be  neither  unjust 
nor  unlovely — nor  un-Christian.  Such 
men  have  restricted  their  outlook  to  the 
salvation  of  the  individual,  ignoring  the 
fact  that  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is  a  social 
Gospel,  the  Lord's  Prayer  a  social  prayer 
and  the  kingdom  of  Heaven  a  corporate 
idea. 

Take,    for   instance,    this    declaration 


122  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

from  an  influential  religious  journal: 
**No  man  lives  who  can  afford  to  be  just, 
for  no  man  could  live  if  he  received  jus- 
tice/' Rather  let  us  contend  that  no 
man  fully  lives  until  he  receives  justice 
and  gives  justice.  Humanly  speaking, 
there  is  no  complete  moral  life  but  in 
equity.  In  this  rights  and  duties  coincide 
and  become  one.  We  have  seen  that 
although  no  one  man  can  be  entirely  just, 
every  man  can  take  social  justice  as  the 
norm  of  his  moral  life. 

But  to  continue  the  quotation:  **We  get 
more  blessings  than  we  deserve,  better 
treatment  from  God  and  men  than  we 
are  entitled  to,  every  day  of  our  lives." 
How?  Is  not  every  man  by  the  law  of 
justice  entitled  to  the  very  best  that  can 
be  done  for  him  to  make  him  an  efficient 
member  of  society?  Does  any  little 
child  get  better — better — at  the  hands  of 
society  than  he  is  entitled  to  ? 

One  man  may  receive  in  some  respect 
more  than  his  share,  but  this  is  because  he 
is  unjust  to  society  and  society  is,  so  far. 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     123 

unjust  to  him.  The  sooner  he  becomes  a 
just  man,  the  sooner  will  he  receive  jus- 
tice— which  is  his  desert.  To  say  that  no 
man  can  live  if  he  receive  justice  from 
his  fellow-men  is  to  imply  that  social  life 
is  possible  only  through  injustice.  This 
is  moral  anarchy.  To  say  that  the  social 
order  rests  upon  injustice  is  practically  a 
contradiction  in  terms.  Justice  is  san- 
ity and  order. 

The  truth  is,  that  no  man  can  afford  to 
be  wwjust,  because  by  any  other  plan  of 
life  he  is  perpetually  annulling  his  own  ac- 
tion, as  has  already  been  shown.  This  is 
what  every  member  of  society  is  suffer- 
ing from.  Society  is  having  a  head-on 
collision  with  itself  because  of  the  lack  of 
a  unified  ideal  and  plan  of  justice.  The 
man  who  contributes  to  an  election  fund 
to  be  expended  in  depriving  him  of  the 
full  value  of  his  vote  Is  in  collisioi;i  with 
himself. 

To  promote  hollow  and  bogus  concerns 
IS  to  weaken  that  public  confidence  which 
even  the  promoter  needs.    To  break  the 


124  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

law  regulating  road  speed  is  to  reduce 
the  protection  which  one  gets  from  all 
law.  He  who  thinks  to  save  himself 
trouble  by  half-washing  a  milk  bottle 
may  bring  back  trouble  in  an  epidemic. 
The  man  who  gambles  with  the  captain 
endangers  the  vessel  on  which  he  is  a 
passenger.  The  editor  who  incites  to 
crime  by  exciting  headlines  may  suffer 
at  the  hand  of  criminals  whom  he  has 
helped  to  cultivate.  And  the  social  edict 
that  throws  the  man  of  forty-five  out  of 
employment  to  make  room  for  younger 
men  returns  with  a  blow  upon  the  head 
of  society  by  increasing  the  number  of  its 
dependants. 

All  such  courses  are  anti-social — ignor- 
ing the  equitable  interdependence  of 
men,  and  are  therefore  personally  im- 
moral. 

To  be  unjust  to  one  is,  by  ever  so  little, 
perhaps,  to  unbalance  the  social  order — > 
which  is  worse  than  the  direct  damage 
to  the  individual.  To  him  as  a  member 
of  society  a  larger,  though  indirect,  dam* 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     125 

age  returns.  The  sooner  we  educate  to 
this  the  better. 

No  man  has  ever  received  his  due  at  the. 
hands  of  man.  No  criminal  but  carries  a 
score  against  his  sometime  environment, 
whichever  score  society  may  reckon 
against  him.  To  no  one  has  society  guar- 
anteed full  righteous  development  of  his 
powers  even  for  society's  own  sake. 
Society  has  suffered  a  partial  paralysis  by 
its  drug  habit  of  injustice. 

But  justice  under  the  name  of  preven- 
tive philanthropy  is  moving  in  multitudi- 
nous ways.  For  the  handicapped  child 
surgery  has  been  substituted  for  scolding 
and  castigation.  For  the  messenger  boys 
liable  to  ruin  by  night  calls  at  houses  of 
vice,  for  very  little  children  toiling 
through  a  long  night  in  cotton  mills,  for 
children  in  the  glass  factories  and  for 
boys  in  the  coal  breakers,  the  voice  of 
justice  is  rising  to  preserve  and  restore  to 
them  the  filched  property  of  their  possi- 
bilities. To  the  city  child  of  the  dark 
tenement  and  the  narrow  alley  are  open- 


126  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

ing  the  opportunities  of  parks,  play- 
grounds, gymnasiums,  baths,  vacation 
schools,  reading  clubs,  libraries,  healthful 
social  centres,  and,  let  us  say,  juvenile 
courts — even  though  Judge  Lindsey  re- 
minds us  that  *^if  the  juvenile  court  is 
designed  to  keep  children  out  of  prisons 
and  gaols,  we  ought  to  have  something 
to  keep  them  out  of  the  juvenile  court." 

If  it  were  always  possible,  the  best  thing 
we  could  have  would  be  a  justly  ordered 
home  and  family  life.  Indeed  one  may 
wonder  whether  the  well-to-do  home  is 
not  in  danger  of  being  neglected  in  the 
partial  struggle  for  prevention.  Our 
homes  have  their  peculiar  liabilities  to 
unjust  discrimination  and  inequality.  In 
the  zeal  to  be  just  outside  a  mother  or 
father  may  forget  the  bench  at  the  fire- 
side.^ This  is  to  be  unjust  to  society  at 
the  most  vital  place. 

It  ought  now  to  be  evident  that  man  can 
never  be  just  to  man  by  starting  with 

'  See  "Fireside  Child  Study. ''  Also  ''Reckonings 
from  Little  Hands. "    Both  by  the  present  author. 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     127 

men.  It  may  be  confidently  asserted  that 
no  one  arrives  at  maturity  properly  ma- 
tured. Every  one  has  been  more  or  less 
despoiled  of  his  possibilities  In  childhood 
and  youth.  The  losses  of  the  past  cannot 
be  wholly  regained,  even  though  Mother 
Nature  is  wonderfully  forgiving  and  re- 
storing. 

This  spoliation  of  youth,  reduced  to  its 
lowest  ethical  denominator,  Is  Injustice; 
and  it  Is  the  chief  cause  of  much  of  the 
subsequent  misery,  delinquency,  disorder, 
and  crime  to  which  society  Is  such  an  easy 
prey.  And  much  of  this  must  be  laid  at 
the  door  of  the  well-to-do,  enlightened, 
Christian  home.  Misery  does  not  pri- 
marily root  in  the  slums. 

How  slow  we  have  been  to  see  that  we 
never  can  put  the  adult  world  where  it 
ought  to  be  by  beginning  with  the  adult 
world!  Repression,  punishment,  relief 
for  body  and  mind,  purification  and  adult 
correction  and  support,  are  good  as  far  as 
they  go,  but  they  do  not  Insure  against 
the  same  role  for  the  next  generation. 


128  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

They  clear  the  school-room  floor,  but  do 
not  prevent  its  disorder  again.  Jesus 
went  about  doing  good  to  all  ages  and 
stages  of  life,  but  he  made  It  very  em- 
phatic that  the  beginning  of  life  Is  the 
place  to  begin  with  Ideal  life. 

We  are  coming  to  see  that  this  divine 
attitude  Is  not  one  of  sentimentality  but  of 
common  sense.  But  we  still  cherish  the 
almshouse,  the  reformatory,  and  the 
prison.  Do  we  help  to  make  men  de- 
pendent and  delinquent  so  that  we  can 
exercise  charity  In  rehevlng  and  correct- 
ing them?  It  Is  Indeed  a  wonderful 
irony,  this  so-called  civilisation  of  ours. 

But  the  juvenile  court,  the  anti-child-la- 
bour movement,  the  children's  aid  soci- 
eties, and  the  kindergarten  are  pushing 
on.  Let  the  homes  of  the  well-to-do  es- 
tablish their  fireside  court,^  where  the 
**suspended  judgment''  is  the  rule,  where 
physical  defect  or  disorder  is  not  rated 
as  moral  delinquency,  and  where  chlld- 

"  See  ''Fireside  Child  Study." 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     129 

ish  feelings,  ambitious,  and  energies  are 
not  suppressed  under  selfish  parental 
threats.  And  so  of  the  school.  And  the 
Church  ?  When  will  It  throw  a  right  em- 
phasis on  the  child,  not  thinking  itself 
dutiful  by  torturing  the  child  Into  the 
mould  of  a  dwarfed  man?  And  when 
win  the  Church  lead  In  social  reform? 

The  educator  of  to-day  regards  the  de- 
veloping personality  of  the  pupil  as  the 
centre  of  his  activity.  So  did  Jesus.  To 
this  developing  personality  the  manifold 
of  Interests  must  be  referred  back  at  all 
times.  This  Is  the  plea  of  proprietary 
simultaneous  rights  and  duties — the 
moral  plea  of  justice. 

This  right  to  one's  own  developing 
personality  Is  the  spiritual  right  of  char- 
acter. But  Its  realisation  Is  possible  only 
to  him  who  recognises  It  as  making  for 
the  general  good  and  subject  to  adjust- 
ment of  the  rights  of  others.  All  rights 
beget  moral  duties ;  all  moral  duties  pre- 
serve rights.  Rights  and  duties  are  a 
single  motif  of  brotherhood. 


I30  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

Even  In  material  things  the  sense  of 
rights  of  possession  must  be  carefully 
guarded  and  trained.  **How  and  in 
what  spirit  is  it  my  duty  to  use  my  power 
or  prerogative?  What  law  can  I  lay 
down  for  myself  so  that  my  powers  shall 
not  be  a  source  of  evil  to  me  and  to 
others?''  asks  President  Woolsey.  **In 
our  partial  view,  justice  may  sometimes 
seem  to  demand  that  we  waive  our  rights 
and  it  may  be  our  duty  to  do  so.  But,  all 
the  same,  it  is  our  duty  also  to  respect 
our  rights  of  possession,  since  these  lie 
at  the  root  of  all  our  charity  and  gener- 
osity/' 

Manifestly  we  cannot  bring  up  a  child 
to  be  kind,  generous,  and  charitable  un- 
less  that  child  is  conceded  a  possession  of 
powers  and  property^  in  withholding 
which  he  could  be  unkind  and  ungener- 
ous. The  sense  of  rights  as  a  social  sense 
comes,  there  fore,  to  be  at  one  with  a  sense 
of  duties. 

And  so  we  find  the  moral  sanction  grav- 
itating every  time  to  the  principle  of  jus- 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     131 

tice  as  the  primal  substructure  of  ordered 
society.  **He  that  is  unjust  in  the  least 
is  unjust  also  in  much,''  because  justice  is 
cooperative  and  interdependent.  **If  ye 
have  not  been  faithful  in  that  which  is 
another's,  who  shall  give  you  that  which 
is  your  own?"^  Your  injustice  to  an- 
other so  disturbs  the  social  relation  that  it 
returns  upon  you. 

Sure  enough.  This  is  not  spite,  but  the 
insight  that  one  cannot  rob  his  neighbour 
without,  morally  at  least,  robbing  him- 
self. 

Justice  is  the  universal  touch,  the  all- 
sided  connectedness,  the  cosmic  respon- 
sibility. The  '^duties  of  imperfect  obli- 
gation" turn  at  last  to  justice  as  their  only 
safe  regulator — lest  in  their  blind  sym- 
pathy they  undo  their  own  well-doing. 

Can  one  break  any  of  the  last  six  items 
of  the  decalogue  without  offending  ideal 
justice?  Can  one  lie  without  robbing 
another  of  his  own?     Is  not  adultery  a 

'  Parable  of  the  Unjust  Steward. 


132  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

blow  at  the  Integrity  of  the  social  rela- 
tion and  organised  efficiency?  Is  not 
calumny  killing,  and  Is  killing  not  rob- 
bery of  powers?  Can  one  Injure  him- 
self without  Injuring  society,  and  so  re- 
turning the  Injury  upon  himself  again? 

What  a  beautiful  equity  we  find  In  the 
model,  or  Lord's,  prayer:  **On  earth  as 
in  heaven";  **ForgIve  us  our  trespasses 
as  we  forgive  those  who  trespass  against 
us."  The  prayer  assumes  social  Interde- 
pendence. 

Trespass  ?  Have  we  not  seen  that  this 
was  the  root  sin  of  Eden?  that  the  first 
moral  principle  on  record  was  the  prin- 
ciple of  justice — the  Inviolate  proprietor- 
ship, the  guarantee  against  trespass? 
Young  childhood  feels  this,  and  the 
growing  child  must  be  educated  to  live  by 
the  discernment  of  It. 

Justice  has  no  place  for  Inertia  and  Irre- 
sponsibility. It  not  only  forbids  our 
causing  another  to  stumble,  but  It  de- 
mands that  we  exert  ourselves  to  prevent 
his  stumbling.    This  principle  Is  finely  11- 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     133 

lustrated,  so  far  as  it  goes,  In  the  laws  of 
the  Norman  kings  of  England.  Under 
Henry  I.,  for  instance,  says  Stubbs^;  **If 
any  one  kills  a  Frenchman  and  the  men 
of  the  neighbourhood  do  not  within  a 
week  take  the  slayer  and  bring  him  be- 
fore the  justices  to  show  why  he  did  it, 
they — that  is,  the  men  of  the  hundred — 
are  to  pay  for  the  murder,  46  marks. 
Here  you  see  the  neglect  to  help  the 
carrying  into  effect  of  the  law  is  made 
punishable." 

Justice  as  a  sentiment  is  the  constant 
and  unswerving  desire  to  render,  let  us 
say  to  guarantee,  to  every  one  his  own. 
This  means  not  only  that  we  avoid  ob- 
structing any  one's  proper  development, 
but  that  we  give  him  his  share  of  our  di- 
rect aid.  We  shall  not  only  punish  the 
miscreant,  but  we  shall  remove  the  causes 
that  have  made  an  evil  doer  of  him ;  we 
shall  not  only  help  the  unfortunate  out  of 
poverty,  but  we  shall  abate  the  condi- 

*  "Lectures  on  Early  English  History,"  p.  52. 


134  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

tions  which  make  his  misfortune  possible. 
A  journal  asks  this  searching  question: 
"More  than  a  hundred  thousand  persons 
united  in  seeking  to  secure  the  release  of 
a  convicted  murderer.  How  many  of 
that  hundred  thousand  will  work  to- 
gether to  help  the  young  man  who  has 
not  been  convicted  of  any  crime,  but  who 
is  working  hard  to  get  an  honest  living 
and  educate  his  children?" 

Justice  thus  becomes  the  guide  to  and 
the  guarantee  of  freedom.  From  its 
origin  in  the  proprietary  sense  of  right 
in  one's  own  powers  it  compasses  the 
whole  moral  obligation  to  secure  a  simi- 
lar proprietorship  to  every  one  in  the 
social  organism.  What  is  now  popularly 
known  as  the  sense  of  human  brother- 
hood is  little  else  than  a  revived  sentiment 
of  justice  come  by  the  utilitarian  or  socio- 
logical road.  It  is  the  voice  of  freedom 
— the  struggle  for  which  is  the  history 
of  the  race. 

Justice,  liberty,  peace.  These  three 
terms  are  but  variants  of  the  thought  of 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     135 

the  perfect  social  structure  or  organism. 
The  word  peace  itself  is  in  its  root  idea 
the  pact  or  union,  as  are  the  words  jus- 
tice^ equity  and  fairness} 

On  the  walls  of  the  War  and  Peace 
Museum  at  Lucerne  there  is  inscribed 
this  paragraph  from  Elihu  Burritt: 

People  may  laugh  at  the  plan  of  arbi- 
tration, but  in  my  opinion  the  warlike 
plan  is  infinitely  more  ludicrous.  The 
inequality  of  horses,  a  disparity  in  the 
power  of  wielding  the  sword,  or  the  pos- 
session of  high  powers  of  strategy  in  a 
general  are  circumstances  which  the 
merest  child  can  understand  and  have  no 
connection  either  with  justice  or  national 
honour. 

This  was  uttered  years  ago.  Why  is 
Burritt  so  sure?  Because  those  things 
which  condition  success  or  defeat  in  war 
have  no  essential  root  in  justice.  There 
is  the  pivotal  point  in  Burritt's  argument. 
He  knew  that  social  control,  that  stable 
conditions  of  order,  were  impossible  ex- 
'  See  Chapter  III. 


136  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

cept  they  be  grounded  In  Ideas  of  justice. 
This  Is  the  moral  rock  on  which  Is  writ- 
ten the  law  of  liberty  and  the  pact  of 
peace.  Perhaps  universal  peace  Is  to 
come  through  the  feeling  of  the  masses 
for  justice  and  In  a  universal  revival  of 
the  sentiment  that  *'a  man's  a  man  for  a' 
that/' 

Note  how  Phillips  Brooks's  definition 
of  liberty^  coincides  with  our  view  of  jus- 
tice :  Liberty  is  the  fullest  opportunity  for 
man  to  be  and  to  do  the  very  best  that  is 
possible  for  him.  It  Is  justice  that  se- 
cures to  him  this  opportunity.  And  this 
Is  possible  only  under  conditions  of  peace* 

This  principle  Is  as  true  In  the  home 
as  It  Is  In  the  counsels  of  the  nations. 
Parental  triumphs  not  rooted  In  fairness 
or  justice,  but  which  rest  on  the  accident 
of  superior  physique  or  other  weight  of 
power,  mean  moral  war  In  the  household 
— however  quiet  the  regime  seems — and 
disaffection  and  possible  delinquency  later 

*  Addresses  based  on  John  8  :  31-36,  p.   105. 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     137 

in  life.  And  this  leads  to  social  rupture 
on  a  larger  scale. 

It  has  been  said  that  earthly  injustice 
argues  for  immortality.  Let  It  also  be 
that  justice  safeguards  the  dead.  The 
leader  of  a  Sunday-school  class  was  once 
drawing  the  customary  moral  from  the 
text  "Gallio  cared  for  none  of  these 
things"  ^ — the  lesson  against  Indifference 
to  the  claims  of  Christ  on  us.  **Is  it  a 
true  parallel?"  asked  a  hesitating 
teacher.  **Well,  it  is  a  lesson  for  us," 
said  the  leader.  *'But  Is  it  fair  to 
Gallio?"  persisted  the  teacher  somewhat 
deferentially.  There  Is  a  deal  of  unfair 
reflection  on  the  characters  of  the  past 
for  the  sake  of  making  a  point.  Does  It 
hurt  them?  It  hurts  their  influence,  to 
which  they  have  still  a  right.  It  hurts  us 
when  we  misconstrue. 

Take  the  case  of  the  Philipplan  gaoler, 
asking,  **What  must  I  do  to  be  saved?"  ^ 
A  Sunday-school  ''lesson  help"  says,  ''Evi- 

*Acts  18  :  17. 
*Acts  16  :  30. 


13?  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

dently  he  was  convicted  of  sin."  I  say 
not  '^evidently/'  But  the  theologian's 
wish  Is  father  to  the  cocksure  Interpre- 
tation. It  may  be  so,  but  fairness  to  the 
gaoler  demands  that  his  meaning  rest  on 
something  else  than  our  exegetlcal  or 
homlletlcal  convenience. 

Justice  feels;  It  embraces  the  soul  of 
sympathy,  pity,  forgiveness,  kindness. 
Justice  thinks;  It  weighs  conditions, 
searches  for  causes  and  effects,  calculates 
the  equity  of  opportunity,  the  reciproc- 
ity of  rights  and  duties  and  discriminates 
and  fixes  moral  values.  Justice  Imagines, 
visualises,  sees  the  whole,  penetrates, 
puts  the  self  In  the  place  of  others,  grasps 
the  unlversals.  Justice  wills,  acts ;  It  Is  a 
doer.  Education  for  justice  Is  therefore 
preeminently  an  education  by  doing. 

Shall  we  forget  to  be  merely  kind,  pity- 
ingly benevolent,  simlllngly  forgiving, 
heartily  generous?  These  duties  of  Im- 
perfect obligation  are  duties  still,  but  the 
more  they  place  themselves  under  the 
guidance  of  the  virile  and  heroic  sense 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     139 

of  justice,  the  more  true  to  themselves 
they  will  be.  We  shall  then  cease  to 
**kill  with  kindness,"  to  impoverish  with 
benevolence,  to  weaken  with  over-assist- 
ance, to  invite  crime  with  too  easy  pardon, 
to  create  offenders  in  the  effort  to  correct 
them. 

Is  it,  then,  that  we  cannot  err  in  the 
name  of  justice  as  we  are  liable  to  do  in 
the  name  of  love,  kindness,  or  charity? 
Of  course  the  finite  mind  is  not  inerrant 
and  absolute  justice  is  a  thing  of  the  In- 
finite Mind. 

But  justice  more  than  any  other  of 
love's  ministers  has  a  definite  plan  of 
thought.  It  is  conscious  of  its  principle. 
If  the  vision  and  reach  of  the  human 
mind  are  not  infinite,  they  mean  to  be  exact 
as  far  as  they  go  and  to  go  farther.  The 
just  mind,  although  limited,  is  neither 
slow  nor  hasty;  it  sees  no  more  reason 
for  **railroading"  one  criminal  because  of 
popular  indignation  than  deferring  the 
sentence  of  another  because  of  his  sup- 
posed   respectability    or    his    obscurity. 


I40  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

The  just  mind,  conscious  of  its  limita- 
tions, is  not  debarred  by  them  from  learn- 
ing all  that  can  be  learned  in  any  case. 
It  is  not  satisfied  to  judge  a  child's  actions 
by  similar  actions  in  the  adult.  It  is  im- 
possible fully  to  understand  a  child,  but 
human  justice,  partial  and  imperfect  as 
it  may  be,  consists  in  the  admission  of  the 
difficulty  instead  of  assuming  to  know  it 
all.  Its  prime  effort  is  to  locate  the  real 
evil  or  the  real  peril. 

Hence,  finite  as  man  is,  justice  is  con- 
scious of  a  certain  finality  in  its  plan  and 
purpose  as  simple  benevolence  cannot  be. 
It  is  economic  and  quantitative.  It  is  a 
habitual  process  of  thought,  a  prescribed 
mode  of  morals.  It  abhors  bias,  is  all- 
sided.  It  is  kindness  set  in  the  infinite 
form.  It  is  altogether  and  always  hu- 
mane. 

The  newspaper  told  us  not  long  ago  of 
a  young  man  who  robbed  his  employer 
because  he  wanted  to  marry,  and  bought 
a  little  house  for  a  prospective  home. 
His  sweetheart,  in  tears  at  the  magis- 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     141 

trate's  court,  said,  **Whatever  he  has 
done  has  been  for  my  sake,  and  TU  never 
give  him  up.  He  did  all  this  because  he 
loved  me.     FU  stay  by  him  to  the  end." 

Justice  did  not  require  that  she  give  him 
up,  but  neither  did  it  permit  her  to  con- 
done his  guilt  because  it  was  for  her  sake. 
Love  might  err  here  where  justice  could 
not.  And  yet  the  magistrate  might 
justly  consider  the  motive.  The  road  by 
which  the  man  came  to  his  fall  is  to  be 
taken  into  account.  Justice  to  her  would 
likewise  condone  in  her,  to  an  extent,  the 
closing  of  her  eyes  to  everything  but  a 
certain  loyalty.  Justice  to  society  would 
demand  both  that  the  culprit  suffer  and 
that  society  suffer  for  not  having  edu- 
cated him  to  the  prevention  of  his  becom- 
ing a  thief.  And  so  forth :  the  process  of 
cause  against  cause,  effect  against  effect, 
is  really  an  infinite  one,  but  it  is  untiringly 
intelligent,  planful,  cooperative,  actuated 
alike  by  sympathy  and  reason,  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  larger  social  good. 

Even  an  old  criminal  may  not  be  the 


f4»  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

same  man  at  the  time  of  his  sentence  as 
he  was  at  the  time  of  his  crime.  Canon 
Mozley/  writing  on  the  reversal  of  hu- 
man judgment,  says,  **Some  one  who  did 
not  promise  much  comes  out  at  the  mo- 
ment of  trial  strikingly  and  favour- 
ably. .  .  .  The  act  of  the  thief  on  the 
cross  is  a  surprise.  Up  to  the  time  he 
was  judged  he  was  a  thief,  and  from  a 
thief  he  became  a  saint.  For  even  in  the 
dark  labyrinth  of  evil  there  are  unex- 
pected outlets.  Sin  is  established  by 
habit  in  the  man,  but  the  good  principle 
which  is  in  him  also,  but  kept  down  and 
suppressed,  may  be  secretly  growing 
toor 

Yet  quite  unjustly  we  continue  to  think 
of  him  as  the  same  old  thief  and  are  sur- 
prised when  told  that  he  is  ready  to  enter 
paradise.  By  the  same  sort  of  unreversed 
judgment  we  make  children  naughty, 
criminals  more  criminal  at  heart,  and 
hinder  their  reform — for  children  and 

•••University  Sermons,"  6th  ed.,  p.  92. 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     143 

men  build  themselves  largely  out  of  our 
judgments  of  them. 

An  ex-policeman  pleading  guilty  to  six- 
teen robberies,  when  about  to  receive  his 
sentence,  asked  and  was  given  permission 
to  address  the  court: 

*Tour  Honour,"  he  said,  **I  have  com- 
mitted many  crimes,  and  the  law  says  that 
crime  must  be  punished.  I  bow  to  the 
mandates  of  the  law.  In  many  cases  it 
is,  however,  impossible  to  punish  the 
guilty  without  making  the  innocent  suffer 
also.  In  my  case  this  is  particularly  true, 
because  the  imposition  of  a  heavy  sen- 
tence will  be  a  blow  to  my  aged  mother, 
whom  I  love  better  than  my  life. 

**Having  had  time  for  reflection  in 
prison,  I  cannot  think  what  possessed  me  to 
do  the  things  that  I  have  done.  It  could 
not  have  been  love  of  gain,  because  the 
results  of  my  crimes  have  been  vastly  ex- 
aggerated. I  took  for  the  most  part  only 
hats  and  umbrellas.  I  committed  no  vio- 
lence, and  never  carried  a  gun  in  my  life. 
Since  my  arrest  I  have  made  a  full  con- 
fession, and  have  made  every  effort  to 
make   ifull  restitution,   and  I   ask  your 


144  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

Honour  to  temper  justice  with  mercy,  so 
that  when  I  come  out  of  prison  I  may 
find  my  poor  old  mother  still  alive,  and 
can  redeem  myself  in  the  eyes  of  my 
fellow-men,  and  be  a  comfort  to  my 
mother's  declining  years,  and  be  with  her 
when  she  dies.  That  is  all  I  have  to  say. 
I  thank  you  for  your  attention." 

"Your  appeal  is  a  strong  one,"  said  the 
Judge  in  reply.  '*I  feel  that  if  your  love 
for  your  mother  is  as  sincere  as  you  say 
it  is,  and  I  have  no  reason  to  question  it, 
It  is  a  very  commendable  feeling  on  your 
part,  but  it  is  a  great  misfortune  that 
you  were  not  controlled  by  it  before  you 
committed  these  crimes.  However,  it  is 
not  for  the  Court  to  regard  the  sentimen- 
tal aspect  of  each  particular  case,  but  the 
bearing  it  has  on  the  general  public.  Re- 
flecting on  your  case,  however,  I  have 
concluded  that  a  lighter  sentence  than 
was  suggested  at  the  time  you  pleaded 
guilty  will  fulfil  the  ends  of  justice." 


This  is  not  sentimentality.  It  is  taking 
all  circumstances  into  account.  It  is  rec- 
ognising that  the  good  principle  in  a 
crime-ridden  man,  kept  down  and  sup- 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     145 

pressed,  had  been  growing,  nevertheless. 
The  first  motive  of  the  State  is  not  to 
punish,  but  to  make  good  citizens.  And 
parents  should  be  under  the  same  rule. 

Formative  and  constructive  justice,  as 
has  been  said,  must  begin  in  the  family. 
The  child  must  be  understood ;  he,  or  his 
nature  at  least,  must  have  a  hearing;  his 
errors  must  be  located ;  his  good  impulses 
recognised  and  fostered.  He  must  be 
conceded  an  individuality  with  a  right  of 
choice,  subject  to  the  general  good — 
which  general  good  also  limits  and  di- 
rects the  choices  of  his  parents  no  less 
than  his  own.  Thus,  justice  to  the  child 
becomes  a  mode  of  his  education  to  a 
just  mind. 

The  home  attitude  must  be  that  of  a 
desire  to  be  fair  in  all  things.  It  must 
show  itself  in  common  conversation. 
The  equitable  note  must  be  sounded  even 
though  the  subject  be  far  out  of  the 
child's  understanding  and  interest.  Jus- 
tice must  hold  itself  a  standing  home 
critic  on  gossip,  exaggeration,  suspicion. 


146  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

and  personal  feelings.  Injustice  must  be 
held  as  the  bane  of  the  reporter's  over- 
statement and  over-publicity;  of  legal 
garnishments,  detective  **sweating"  proc- 
esses, rebates,  bosses,  child  slavery, 
cruelty  to  animals,  corporal  punishment, 
church  heresy  trials,  capital  oppression, 
trade,  clerical,  medical,  and  legal  imposi- 
tion, food  adulteration  and  so  forth. 

Justice  asks  one  to  rinse  out  a  pub- 
lic drinking  cup  after  using  it  as  surely 
as  before;  it  keeps  lead  pencils  out  of  the 
mouth  of  the  pencil  borrower;  warns  the 
woman  in  the  sealskin  coat  not  to  fan  her 
delicate  neighbour  in  the  front  pew; 
points  the  newcomer  to  the  foot  of  the 
line  at  the  ticket  office ;  keeps  dirty  boots 
off  of  car  seats;  considers  the  passenger 
back  of  the  open  window;  orders  punc- 
tuality as  a  social  virtue;  never  demands 
that  a  cook  shall  be  infallible  with  a 
worn-out  stove  or  without  good  utensils ; 
issues  no  conflicting  orders  to  employees 
without  apology  and  self-reform;  ab- 
stains    from     marking    public     library 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     147 

books;  refuses  to  spit  on  floors;  recog- 
nises that  the  success  of  a  church  may  de- 
pend as  much  on  the  fidelity  of  a  sexton 
or  janitor  as  upon  the  pastor  or  the 
treasurer;  forbids  that  an  audience  scat- 
ter itself  in  rear  seats,  expecting  the 
speaker  to  exert  himself  to  be  heard 
when  the  front  seats  are  empty;  sees  that 
the  labourer's  mind,  or  that  of  the  house 
servant,  needs  the  relief  of  change  and 
variety  as  does  that  of  his  master;  be- 
lieves that  a  public  officer  may  be  honest 
and  able  and  yet  make  a  mistake ;  denies 
to  the  chauffeur  the  murderous  right  of 
way  simply  because  of  his  willingness  to 
pay  a  fine;  refuses  to  stigmatise  every  law 
breaker  as  a  criminal  or  always  to  em- 
phasise the  fact  that  it  is  a  negro  and 
never  that  it  is  a  white  man,  or  to  put 
the  released  criminal  under  a  perpetual 
ban. 

Justice  first  took  the  shackles  from  the 
insane  and  provided  schools  for  the  blind, 
the  deaf,  and  the  imbecile — giving  them 
the  greatest  possible  opportunity  for  the 


T48  THE  CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

development  of  their  powers  and  the  giv- 
ing to  them  a  place  in  the  organised  social 
energy.  Justice  must  go  farther  and  pre- 
vent insanity,  imbecility,  and  other  afflic- 
tions. The  employer  must  relieve  the 
monotony  of  his  treadmill  and  the  mind 
of  the  least  must  have  a  varied  outlook. 
The  justice  of  cure  must  be  put  out  of 
business  by  the  justice  of  prevention. 
This  idea  at  least  must  dominate  the 
moral  regimen.  In  a  thousand  such  ways 
the  youthful  sense  of  justice  must  be  con- 
served and  strengthened  by  suggestion 
and  practice. 

There  is  no  subject,  no  occasion,  involv- 
ing the  relation  between  man  and  man 
which  is  not  under  the  regulative  moral 
eye  and  hand  of  justice.  A  few  of  the 
more  familiar  types  have  just  been  enu- 
merated— familiar,  yet  not  so  commonly 
thought  of  as  matters  of  justice.  The 
home  has  there  a  large  educational  field. 

There  are  other  types.  Take  the  physi- 
cian who  makes  an  egregious  error  of 
diagnosis,  which  involves  the  patient  in 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     149 

large  expense  for  a  course  of  treatment 
subsequently  admitted  to  have  been  en- 
tirely erroneous;  or  the  physician  who 
visits  too  often  because  his  own  funds  are 
low;  or  the  patient  who  is  slow  to  pay 
his  bill  because  it  comes  so  long  after 
his  recovery;  or  the  extortion  of  a  spe- 
cialist without  regard  to  a  certain  claim 
upon  his  skill  by  the  social  inheritance 
which  has  made  it  possible;  or  the 
lawyer  who  unduly  postpones  and 
appeals  on  errors  which  do  not  affect  the 
justice  of  the  judgment;  or  the  editor 
who  orders  an  expert  article  and  then  re- 
fuses to  take  it — costing  the  author  days 
of  research,  perhaps,  and  literary  la- 
bour;^ or  the  editor  who,  more  moved  by 
fairness,   pays   for  an   article   and  sup- 

^  I  am  aware  that  an  editor  is  supposed  to  know- 
unerringly  what  is  good  for  his  paper  and  what  his 
constituents  want,  and  also  that  the  paper  is  his, 
and  that  no  one  need  write  for  it  if  he  does  not 
wish  to.  The  plea  is  plausible,  but  I,  for  one, 
have  never  believed  in  editorial  infallibility.  In 
fact,  being  an  editor  may  be  the  best  reason  for  not 
knowing  always  what  the  public  wants  or  ought  to 


15©  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

presses  it  without  giving  the  author  the 
opportunity  of  using  it  elsewhere ;  or  the 
church  court  that  tries  a  minister  for 
heresy  by  a  vast  assembly  necessarily 
prejudiced,  inexperienced,  heated,  and 
without  calm  personal  deliberation  on 
proper  evidence. 

Right  here,  also,  let  us  pause  to  consider 
the  matter  of  church  statistical  reports. 
In  some  of  the  larger  denominations — 
and  I  speak  with  surer  knowledge  of  my 
own — essential  comparisons  of  the  local 
churches  are  impossible  to  a  fair  mind. 
Certain  totals  are  absolutely  deceptive  or 
meaningless.  Lack  of  uniformity  in 
method  results  in  misconstruing  and  in 
the  over-  or  under-estimating  of  relative 
strength,  zeal,  or  efficiency.  The  out- 
have.  Professionalism  is  a  bar  to  progress.  I  say 
this  as  an  editor.  Great  reforms  and  great  discov- 
eries have  often  been  unprofessional.  A  contributor 
may  be  a  better  judge,  sometimes,  than  an  editor. 
In  any  case,  an  author  from  whom  an  article  is  or- 
dered has  a  certain  claim  to  recognition.  I  say  this 
not  without  knowing  that  the  subject  is  complex  and 
difficult  and  the  lines  of  cleavage  indefinite. 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     151 

come  is  an  unjust  rating  of  ministers  or 
of  organisations.  Many  ministers  ap- 
pear under  these  statistics  as  successes, 
others  as  failures  in  one  way  or  another, 
while  the  truth  is  the  comparisons  are 
farcical,  and  some  are  unduly  exalted 
while  others  are  unduly  lamented  or 
blamed.  This  is  bad  suggestion  for  the 
young  folk  of  the  church. 

This  unsystematic  system  of  the 
churches  is  more  or  less  evidenced  also  in 
some  of  the  philanthropic  institutions  un- 
der the  Church's  care.  In  a  semi-volun- 
tary organisation  some  looseness  and  in- 
definiteness  Is  perhaps  to  be  expected. 
But  the  truth  is  the  Church  has  made 
so  little  of  social  equity  or  justice, 
as  the  foundation  method  of  love — that 
she  has  no  ethical  spine.  She  has  been  so 
afraid  that  somebody  might  substitute 
morality  for  religion  that  she  has  lost  the 
sense  of  Christian  proportion. 

Of  course  there  are  glorious  exceptions 
among  church  officers  and  workers.  Our 
great  philanthropies,   in  which  love  is 


152  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

working  out  as  justice,  are  largely 
manned  by  professing  Christians.  It  Is 
the  Church  as  an  Institution  that  Is  suffer- 
ing from  suppressed  equity  and  that 
needs  nothing  more  than  to  teach  and 
practise  the  morality  of  justice. 

The  Injustice  of  ecclesiastical  formalism 
reaches  the  absurd  In  the  following, 
which  Is  clipped  from  The  Literary  Di- 
gest: 

The  scandal  caused  by  the  protest  of  the 
Rev.  S.  D.  Brownjohn  against  the  con- 
firmation of  Bishop  Temple  as  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  was  not  so  much 
the  scandal  of  his  Interruption  of  the 
ceremony  as  It  was  the  scandal  and  sac- 
rilege of  the  refusal  to  hear  his  protest. 
After  full  public  notice  * 'given  to  all  and 
singular  opposers"  of  the  election  of 
Dr.  Temple  as  Archbishop  to  come  to 
St.  Mary-le-Bow  Church  on  Decem- 
ber 2 2d  to  make  their  objections,  Mr. 
Brownjohn  appeared.  The  royal  man- 
date was  read  In  the  presence  of  eight 
bishops  commissioned  by  the  Crown  to 
confirm  the  election,  citing  all  opposers, 
if  any,  to  appear,    Mr.  Brownjohn  arose 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     153 

and  said  that  he  desired  to  protest  against 
the  confirmation  of  Dr.  Temple's  election 
because  of  his  belief  in  doctrines  which 
the  protester  believed  to  be  absolutely 
**incompatible  with  fidelity  to  the  teach- 
ing of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer." 
Thereupon  he  was  told  he  could  not  be 
heard  and  that  it  had  long  ago  been  de- 
cided that  the  Court  had  no  power  to 
entertain  such  objection.  The  Arch- 
bishop of  York  concurred,  and  the 
opposer  was  silenced.  The  ceremony 
went  on,  and  the  august  company  was 
told  that  the  new  Primate  was  a  prudent 
and  discreet  man,  eminent  for  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  Scriptures  and  in  every  way 
suitable  to  the  position.  Then  the  Ap- 
paritor-General proceeded  slowly  down 
the  aisle  crying: 

*'Oyez !  Oyez !  All  ye  and  sundry  who 
have  any  objection  to  the  confirmation 
of  the  Rt.  Rev.  Frederick  Temple  as 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  come  for- 
ward and  ye  shall  he  heardJ' 

Thereupon  Mr.  Brownjohn  arose,  and 
again  tried  to  make  his  protest;  but  was 
again  silenced,  and  told  by  the  Arch- 
bishop of  York  that  he  could  not  be 
heard.    Then  to  cap  the  absurdity  of  it 


154  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

all,  the  Vicar-General  denounced  as  con- 
tumacious those  who  had  failed  to  pre- 
sent their  objections: 

*^I  accuse  the  contumacy  of  all  and  sin- 
gular the  persons  as  aforesaid  cited,  in- 
timated, publicly  called  and  not  appear- 
ing, and  I  pray  them  to  be  pronounced 
contumacious." 


But,  after  all,  we  come  back  to  child- 
hood and  youth — sensitive,  discerning, 
imitative — as  the  time  of  life  when  injus- 
tice does  the  most  mischief,  and  the  home 
and  the  school  as  the  places  where  it 
counts  for  most.  The  boy  may  forget 
the  unfairness  of  his  playmate,  but  he 
is  likely  to  remember  that  of  his  precep- 
tor. Just  one  more  illustration  from  a 
school  journal:  ^^A  boy  in  a  New  York 
public  school  was  accused  by  his  teacher 
of  breaking  a  pane  of  glass  in  a  window. 
He  denied  the  charge  and  explained  that 
he  was  some  distance  from  the  place ;  but 
he  saw  that  the  teacher  did  not  believe 
him.  This  occurred  almost  fifty  years 
ago,  when  there  was  much  severity  em- 


EXTENSION  AND  FURTHER  ELUCIDATION     155 

ployed  in  the  treatment  of  schoolboys. 
The  attitude  of  the  teacher  was  so  threat- 
ening that  the  boy  stayed  away  from 
school.  A  relative  going  to  California 
consented,  at  his  earnest  request,  to  take 
him  West.  After  thirty  years  he  re- 
turned and  sought  his  old  teacher,  whose 
first  words  were,  'Horace,  I  found  out 
that  it  was  not  you  who  broke  the  glass.' 
Until  then  Horace  had  kept  his  griev- 
ance." 

That  the  sense  of  justice  is  probably 
never  wholly  obliterated  from  any  hu- 
man breast  is  strongly  indicated  in  previ- 
ous chapters.  But  that  it  may  become 
too  weak  to  prevent  an  unjust  motive  in 
the  same  human  breast  is  also  true. 

One  of  the  first  ways  to  weaken  the 
moral  development  of  the  child  is  to  vio- 
late his  instinct  of  justice  by  dealing  un- 
justly with  him  or  with  any  one  within 
his  view — being  inconsiderate  of  the  pro- 
prietary rights  and  the  personality  of  will 
in  others. 

Our  own  self-regimen  will  consist  pri- 


156  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

marily  in  thinking  justice  until  it  becomes 
a  settled  habit  of  mind,  manifesting  itself 
outwardly  in  action. 

The  training  of  others  will  consist 
largely  in  this  personal  attitude  by  sug- 
gestion. Our  thought  habit  will  show 
itself  less  in  philosophising  or  didactics 
than  in  an  obvious  intention  to  hear  all 
sides,  to  avoid  snap  judgments;  in  a 
calm  mental  control,  a  readiness  to  apolo- 
gise and  to  forgive,  a  remembrance  of 
past  good  record  in  the  face  of  a  present 
aberration  or  failure,  a  right  valuation  of 
intentions,  an  allowance  for  difficulties  of 
overcoming,  and  an  inflexibility  of  pur- 
pose to  be  fair.  In  other  words,  justice 
must  be  taught  chiefly  by  justice. 

Love  is  power ;  it  tells  us  we  must  love 
our  neighbour.  Justice  directs;  It  tells 
us  we  must  love  him  as  we  love  ourselves. 
This  is  the  justice-love  of  Scripture.  In 
It  rights  and  duties  merge  as  the  one  com- 
mon social-moral  obligation.  Brother- 
hood is  real,  for  righteousness  and  peace 
kiss  each  other. 


PART  SECOND 

M 

APPLICATION 


VII 

SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS 

To  discuss  the  ethical  value  of  justice  is 
one  thing  and  to  practise  it  as  the  funda- 
mental moral  duty  is  another. 

The  average  mind — and  too  often  the 
mind  far  above  average — finds  it  diffi- 
cult to  apply  abstract  principles  to  the 
concrete  situations  as  they  emerge  in  life. 
We  may  go  a  little  farther  and  say  that 
many  such  minds  are  not  troubled  with 
this  difficulty,  for  they  simply  do  not 
think  of  there  being  any  relation  between 
the  principles  and  the  immediate  condi- 
tions. 

It  is  not  uncommon  to  see  the  child- 
study  psychologist  fail  utterly  to  adjust 
himself  by  his  own  recipes  to  children  in 
the  real.  The  laws  of  child  nature  he 
has  never  discerned  as  duties  to  children. 


i6o  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

Similarly,  we  may  philosophise  on  the 
origin,  nature,  and  function  of  justice;  we 
may  accord  to  it  its  basal  importance  in 
the  scale  of  social  virtues;  we  may 
even  plead  a  public  cause  in  the  name 
of  all  that  is  equitable  and  right  or 
don  the  judicial  robe  on  occasion — 
and  yet  when  it  comes  to  being 
simply  fair,  or  just,  in  the  kaleidoscopic 
commonplaces  of  life  we  ignomini- 
ously  fail.  We  not  only  deny  the  right 
of  a  hearing  to  cases,  but  we  do  not 
even  discern  cases.  We  toss  off  judg- 
ments without  a  thought  of  their  remote 
but  probable  consequences. 

It  has  already  been  said  that  the  basal 
rule  of  practice  is  to  think  justice — to  do 
this  as  an  acquired  habit  of  mind.  In  a 
degree  this  will  involve  a  consciousness 
of  all  that  the  term  stands  for  in  the 
unity  of  a  true  human  brotherhood.  It 
will  quicken  our  sense  of  the  duty  to  ren- 
der unto  every  one  his  own  and  to  aid 
every  one  to  develop  his  highest  efficiency 
toward  the  general  good. 


SPECIMEN    APPLICATIONS  i6l 

Thinking  justice  will  require  our  tak- 
ing all  contributory  circumstances  into 
account.  We  shall  have  to  take  per- 
sons— children  or  adults — exactly  where 
we  find  them,  no  matter  by  what  road 
they  came,  yet  considering  that  road  as 
a  criminating  or  excusing  factor  in  their 
present  position. 

As  justice  is  the  earliest  moral  interest, 
we  shall  have  to  appeal  to  our  fellows 
with  their  natural  interests  and  instincts 
in  mind,  since  these  indicate  the  direc- 
tions which  nature  has  pointed  out  for  the 
development  of  their  possibilities  and  the 
realisation  of  their  powers.  This  realisa- 
tion is  their  primal  right  and  its  recog- 
nition is  our  primal  moral  duty. 

Now  let  us  step  into  the  common  walks 
of  life  and  see  how  we  should  go  about 
applying  the  principle  or  adopting  the 
method  of  justice  in  practice.  Mani- 
festly the  first  thing  in  any  criticism  or 
judgment  of  our  fellows  is  to  give  them 
a  hearing.  This,  in  the  hurly  burly  of 
social  life,  cannot  mean  that  every  one 


l62  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

must  be  formally  questioned  and  cross- 
questioned.  But  it  does  mean  that  we  are 
to  take  contributory  causes  and  circum- 
stances— including  obstacles  and  motives 
into  account  so  far  as  possible/  It  pro- 
hibits the  snap  and  demands  the  sus- 
pended judgment.  **He  that  answereth 
a  matter  before  he  heareth  it,  it  is  folly 
and  shame  unto  him.''  ^ 

Mr.  Plumbline  lived  in  a  large  city  at 
the  corner  of  two  broad  streets.  He 
had  been  annoyed  at  times  by  the  pound- 
ing of  a  hard  ball  against  his  back  board 
fence.  The  two  objections  were  that  it 
was  unpleasant  to  hear,  and  that  it 
threatened  to  damage  the  fence.  One 
day  just  as  Mr.  Plumbline  was  about  to 
go  out  the  shouts  of  the  boys  and  the  ir- 
regular rhythm  of  the  pounding  began. 
As  he  crossed  the  street  at  the  front  end 


*See  ''Fireside  Child  Study,"  by  the  present 
author,  for  a  more  particular  exposition.  Also 
"Beckonings  from  little  Hands."  (Dodd,  Mead 
&  Co.) 

'  Proverbs  i8  :  13. 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  163 

of  the  property  his  first  impulse  was  to 
call  to  the  boys  to  stop  their  game  or  go 
elsewhere. 

He  halted  and  said  to  himself,  **If  I  do, 
I  shall  incur  the  enmity  of  the  boys  and 
probably  accomplish  no  good.  Why 
might  I  thus  incur  their  enmity?  Be- 
cause by  such  a  course  I  do  not  recognise 
certain  instincts  and  interests  of  theirs 
perfectly  proper  and  in  fact  necessary  to 
their  development.  Enmity  does  not 
make  for  the  integrity  of  the  social  bond 
or  presage  peace.  At  the  same  time,  to 
maintain  my  property  rights  will  in  a 
degree  abridge  their  personal  freedom. 
These  boys  want,  and  ought  to  have,  free 
exercise.  They  have  no  place  to  go  to 
get  it  between  school  sessions.  We  all 
have  to  yield  something." 

One  group  of  boys  stood  on  Mr. 
Plumbline's  sidewalk,  another  stood  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  street.  They 
were  throwing  the  ball  across  from  one 
side  to  the  other.  When  the  boys  on  Mr. 
Plumbline's  walk  missed  catch,  the  ball 


i64  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

hit  the  fence  just  behind  them  with  the 
menacing  thud. 

**Now/'  mused  Mr.  Plumbllne,  ''I 
will  permit  a  certain  amount  of  this  nuis- 
ance in  the  interest  of  the  boys'  enjoy- 
ment and  need  of  exercising  their  muscles 
in  a  favourite  pastime.  Next  to  the 
necessary  outlet  of  youthful  spirit  and 
energy  (which  the  world  needs) ,  the  basal 
motif  of  this  play  is  skill  in  throwing 
and  catching.  Youth  has  a  good  sense 
of  fairness,  so  my  property  rights  fairly 
brought  to  their  notice  will  appeal  to 
them  provided  also  I  recognise  that  they 
have  proprietary  rights^  in  the  develop- 
ment of  their  powers  and  the  acquirement 
of  cheerful  character. 

So  Mr.  Plumbline  walked  down  the 
street,  avoiding  any  appearance  of  vin- 
dictiveness  as  he  approached  the  group 
on  his  sidewalk.  **Boys,"  he  said,  '*that 
ball  is  rather  hard  on  my  fence,  you  know. 
It's  all  right  for  you  to  play  here,  of 

'  See  Chapter  III, 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  165 

course,  but  you'll  have  to  try  to  do  better 
catching,  and  then  that  will  save  the 
fence.  Try  your  skill  a  little  better,  won't 
you?"  **A11  right,  sir,  we  will,"  said  the 
boys  as  Mr.  Plumbline  walked  away. 
The  nuisance  was  abated,  no  enmity  was 
visible.  Very  pretty  story — in  theory, 
do  you  say?  It  is  a  real  case.  That 
such  a  course  will  always  be  possible  or 
will  always  succeed  is  by  no  means  here 
claimed.  One  cannot  always  make  it  his 
business  to  educate  the  boys  in  the  street. 
But  the  principle  is  the  one  demanding 
first  consideration. 

Take  another  case.  When  school  is  out 
the  boys  and  girls,  whose  release  is  a  sig- 
nal for  physical  demonstration,  are  often 
a  source  of  annoyance  to  the  neighbour- 
hood. They  want  fun  in  exchange  for 
the  compulsory  earnestness  of  the  class- 
room. They  are  not  necessarily  bad,  but 
the  removal  of  organised  restraint  re- 
sults in  trespass  or  depredation  on  abut- 
ting properties. 

Mr.  Fairbrother's  back  gate  was  usu- 


l66  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

ally  left  unlocked,  and  complaints  had 
come  from  the  kitchen  that  the  boys  were 
bad.  Happening  to  look  out  of  an  up- 
per window  one  day,  he  saw  a  youthful 
invasion  of  his  back  yard.  In  a  few  mo- 
ments he  dashed  from  the  kitchen  door 
into  the  midst  of  the  astonished  group 
and  closed  the  gate,  thus  Imprisoning  a 
few  of  the  trespassers.  Immediately 
they  all  scaled  the  fence  except  one, 
whom  Mr.  Falrbrother  held  fast. 

"Don't  you  know  that  this  Is  my  prop- 
erty?" asked  the  owner,  with  perfect 
calmness. 

"Yes,  sir,"  replied  the  boy;  "but  the 
other  fellows  push  me  In  here,  and  I  can't 
help  It." 

There  was  no  just  reason  for  disputing 
this  statement,  but  neither  was  there  any 
reason  why  Mr.  Falrbrother  should  not 
give  the  boy  a  ground  of  appeal  to  his 
fellows.  If  his  excuse  were  true,  or  make 
an  appeal  to  himself.  If  It  were  not  true. 

"Do  you  think  It  fair  to  come  In  here  in 
this  way,  without  permission?" 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  167 

**No,  sir." 

**If  you  had  a  private  property,  would 
you  think  it  fair  in  me  to  do  as  I  pleased 
with  it?" 

**No,  sir;  but  I  couldn't  help  it." 

"Well,  ril  believe  you,  but  you  tell  the 
fellows  that  it  isn't  a  fair  thing,  will 
you?" 

**A11  right,  sir." 

The  boy  was  discharged  without  repri- 
mand or  threat  or  ill  will.  His  own  in- 
stinct of  justice  had  been  appealed  to,  he 
had  been  trusted,  he  had  not  even  been 
scolded.  The  youthful  irruptions  were 
heard  of  no  more.  This  is  another  real 
case.  Such  a  course  might  not  have 
ended  successfully  with  other  boys.  Nor 
can  one  always  employ  such  means  in 
cases  of  malicious  mischief.  But  it  de- 
mands first  consideration. 

Now  it  is  true  that  that  boy's  father 
might  have  been  a  "grafter"  politician, 
thus  committing  far  worse,  although  in- 
visible, depredations  on  Mr.  Fair- 
brother's  property.    He  may  have  been 


1 68  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

a  well-to-do  merchant  or  manufacturer — 
adulterating  Mr.  Fairbrother's  daily 
food  or  selling  to  him  commodities  of 
sustenance  with  false  weights.  In  a 
dozen  other  ways  he  may  have  invaded 
Mr.  Fairbrother's  personal  rights  in  one 
way  or  another,  if  not  directly,  at  least 
indirectly,  by  business  methods  afflicting 
the  body  politic;  for,  as  has  been  sagely 
said  by  a  noted  preacher,  the  immorali- 
ties and  persecutions  of  the  Middle  Ages 
were  not  further  behind  Christ's  example 
than  are  the  predatory  corporations,  the 
ill-gotten  fortunes  and  some  of  the  busi- 
ness standards  of  our  own  time. 

These  business  standards  and  methods 
create  the  atmosphere  in  which  youthful 
depredation  flourishes,  and  so  long  as  we 
tolerate  and  even  contribute,  perhaps,  to 
that  atmosphere  ourselves  we  cannot 
justly  lay  all  blame  on  the  young  energy 
that  fattens  on  it.  There  is  any  amount 
of  lawlessness  among  the  sober  and  **re- 
spectable''  members  of  society,  and  this 
filters  down  to  the  children.    The  fathers 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  169 

are  beyond  our  common  reach.  The 
main  thing  is  to  train  the  rising  genera- 
tion into  a  keener  sense  of  social  obliga- 
tions by  treating  them  with  all  the  con- 
siderations demanded  by  the  equitable 
and  cooperative  spirit  principle. 

An  instance  in  which  the  provocation 
was  similar  to  the  preceding,  but  the 
treatment  was  different,  comes  from  the 
columns  of  a  contemporary:^ 

A  gentleman  who  had  purchased  a 
house  found  upon  occupying  it  that  a 
corner  of  his  yard  was  made  a  passage- 
way by  boys  from  two  families  which 
dwelt  on  opposite  sides  of  his  house. 
They  climbed  over  his  fence,  broke  down 
bushes  in  their  ruthless  haste  and  were 
regardless  of  all  appeals  to  desist.  They 
had  no  respect  for  the  maid  who  called 
to  them,  and  laughed  at  his  wife  who 
chided  them.  What  could  he  do?  He 
might  have  notified  the  police  or  have 
sent  word  to  the  parents,  but  he  would 
thereby  have  antagonised  the  boys,  and 
provoked  them  to  mean  retaliations,  re- 

'  The  Watchman, 


I70  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

garding  him  as  a  mean  old  curmudgeon, 
and  he  would  have  created  ill  feeling  on 
the  part  of  the  parents.  He  came  to  a 
quick  decision  to  take  down  the  fence  at 
one  point,  lay  a  board  walk  so  that  the 
boys  would  take  that  route  and  do  no 
harm  to  the  shrubs. 

The  writer  of  this  note  then  comments : 
"Was  not  this  the  best  solution  ?  He  has 
no  further  real  cause  of  annoyance,  the 
parents  are  not  antagonised,  and  possibly 
the  boys  are  touched  by  more  generous 
treatment." 

Much  would  depend  upon  the  way  in 
which  this  was  done.  The  boys  may 
have  regarded  themselves  as  victors  and 
chuckled  over  their  conquest,  in  which 
all  the  advantage  was  theirs  without 
there  being  any  reciprocity  or  recognition 
of  the  man's  property  right.  A  judicious 
conversation  with  the  boys,  making  a 
point  of  their  natural  desire  to  shorten 
their  path,  would  have  given  some  educa- 
tional value  to  the  affair;  but  a  basis  of 
reciprocity,  such  as  that  of  the  first  case 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  171 

above  cited,  would  have  gone  to  the  bot- 
tom and  helped  the  boys  more  surely 
toward  good  cooperative  citizenship. 
Barring  the  fact  that  the  man  did  what 
he  did  for  sheer  self-protection,  with  no 
educative  intent  beyond  that,  his  action 
might  be  called  kind  or  generous  or  for- 
giving, but  hardly  equitable.  Kindness 
is  immediate  and  circumscribed.  Justice 
is  social  and  far  reaching. 
The  late  Dr.  H.  Clay  Trumbull  used  to 
tell  a  story  of  his  own  youth,  which  is  of 
interest.  His  biographer  thus  records 
it:' 

Henry  had  been  assigned  to  the  engi- 
neering and  pay  department,  in  which 
he  later  became  paymaster  of  construc- 
tion. The  young  clerks  in  the  office  had 
fallen  into  the  habit  of  borrowing  from 
the  chief  engineer's  desk,  in  his  absence, 
an  inkstand  containing  a  special  ink. 
Henry  accepted  this  habit  as  one  of  the 
office  practices,  and  one  day  was  using 
the  inkstand  when  his  chief,  Mr.  Samuel 

'  From  ''The  Life  Story  of  Henry  Clay  Trum- 
bull," by  Philip  E.  Howard. 


172  THE  CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

Ashburner,  needed  it  at  once.  Sending 
into  the  room  where  the  clerks  were  work- 
ing, Mr.  Ashburner  had  the  young  scribe 
and  the  borrowed  inkstand  brought  be- 
fore him. 

**Henry,"  he  said,  with  kindly  empha- 
sis, **I  want  that  inkstand  to  remain  on 
my  desk  at  all  times.  You  must  never 
take  it  away." 

**ril  bear  that  in  mind,  sir,"  answered 
the  young  man,  and  went  back  to  his 
work. 

A  few  days  later  the  ink  was  missing 
when  Mr.  Ashburner  had  occasion 
to  use  it.  Stepping  to  the  door  of 
the  clerks'  room,  he  called  sharply, 
"Henry !"  Young  Trumbull  quickly  fol- 
lowed him  into  the  next  room.  [Trum- 
bull was  nothing  if  not  alert.] 

**Henry,"  he  exclaimed,  **what  did  I 
tell  you  about  that  inkstand?" 

**You  told  me  not  to  take  it  away 
again." 

*Tes,  and  I  meant  it.  Now  bring  it  to 
me  at  once!" 

Henry  passed  into  the  clerks'  room, 
lifted  the  missing  inkstand  from  the  desk 
of  another,  and  carried  it  to  his  chief. 
As  he  placed  it  in  its  proper  place  and 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  173 

Started  to  leave  the  room,  Mr.  Ash- 
burner  looked  severely  at  him. 

"Henry,"  he  said,  emphatically,  **never 
let  this  happen  again." 

*'ril  bear  in  mind  what  you  say,  sir," 
was  the  quiet  answer. 

Later  in  the  day  the  clerk  who  had  been 
at  fault  manfully  explained  the  whole 
matter  to  his  superior.  Henry  was  at 
once  summoned.  With  an  earnest  and 
troubled  look  Mr.  Ashburner  received 
him.  ^  **Why  didn't  you  tell  me  this 
morning  that  you  hadn't  taken  that  ink- 
stand?" 

"You  didn't  ask  me,  sir,"  replied 
Henry. 

The  chief  was  somewhat  nonplussed. 
He  had  found  men  ready  enough  to  lay 
blame  upon  others,  but  not  so  ready  to 
keep  still  when  even  a  word  of  denial 
might  clear  them.  Henry  Trumbull's 
refinement  of  moral  vision  was  a  revela- 
tion to  him.  The  interview  was  closed 
with  an  apology  from  the  chief,  and 
Henry  went  back  to  his  desk.  He  was 
building  character  while  helping  to  build 
railroads. 

A    very    interesting    ethical    question 


174  THE  CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

arises  here.  What  was  Henry's  motive 
for  taking  blame  until  he  was  asked 
whether  he  committed  the  deed  ?  What 
was  his  habit  of  mind  in  such  a  case? 
That  he  had  "a  contemptuous  disregard 
of  consequences  when  doing  the  right," 
as  his  biographer  claims,  is  unquestioned. 
That  the  occasion  was  taken  by  Trum- 
bull as  an  opportunity  for  self-conquest 
must  also  be  placed  to  the  credit  of  his 
discernment  and  resolute  self-mastery. 
But  the  question  remains  whether  these 
virtues  might  not  have  been  equally  ex- 
ercised without  permitting  the  employer 
(or  chief)  to  act  as  a  false  accuser.  It 
remains  true,  also,  that  the  employer  was 
unjust  in  passing  judgment  upon  Henry 
without  interrogating  him.  Henry 
taught  his  chief  a  lesson  in  justice  without 
an  insolent  word.  Certainly  this  was 
masterful.  And  still  the  question 
presses :  Did  duty  require  Henry  to  suffer 
a  false  charge  of  disobedience?  Did 
duty  demand  that  the  chief  must  be  left 
to  discover  his  own  error,  or  that  some 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  175 

one  else  should  reveal  it  to  him?  The 
question  must  be  settled  upon  a  basis  of 
equity  or  justice.  It  cannot  be  settled 
on  a  basis  of  benevolence  or  unguided 
love. 
A  twelve-year-old  boy  was  locked  up 
for  thirty  days  in  his  father's  attic  until 
released  by  official  action.  When  detec- 
tives visited  the  house — so  the  report 
reads — the  mother  conducted  them  to 
the  boy's  place  of  confinement. 

The  boy  appeared  to  be  a  remarkably 
bright  little  fellow,  but  he  was  evidently 
losing  interest  in  life,  owing  to  his  soli- 
tude. The  room  was  almost  devoid  of 
furnishings  and  was  poorly  ventilated,  a 
stool  or  small  table  being  all  that  the 
prisoner  had  to  sit  upon  and  all  the  fresh 
air  that  he  could  get  came  in  through  a 
space  about  four  inches  wide  in  the  west 
window,  which  was  raised  that  distance 
and  securely  nailed.  The  front  window 
was  found  to  be  tightly  nailed  down  and 
darkened  by  a  heavy  curtain  which  was 
tightly  secured.  The  detectives  say  that 
the  boy  when  thirsty  was  compelled  to 
lower  a  bottle  to  the  ground  by  means 


176  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

of  a  String,  and  if  any  one  happened  to 
notice  it  they  would  fill  it,  when  he  would 
hoist  it  up  and  drain  it  through  the  small 
opening  in  the  window. 

When  the  detectives  inquired  why  the 
lad  was  so  severely  punished,  his  mother, 
who  is  an  intelligent-appearing  woman, 
said  he  was  first  locked  up  for  a  few 
days  for  staying  out  late  at  night.  A  few 
days  afterward  the  next-door  neighbour 
missed  $5  in  cash  and  a  watch.  It  was 
found  that  the  lad  had  gotten  out  of  a 
window  into  the  neighbour's  house,  and 
had  taken  the  articles.  The  watch  he 
took  apart  while  trying  to  find  some 
amusement  in  his  solitary  confinement. 

For  this  offence  his  father  sentenced 
him  to  a  month  in  jail,  four  weeks  of 
which  he  had  served.  He  was  sentenced 
to  solitary  confinement,  and  the  window 
of  his  prison-room  was  fastened  to  pre- 
vent his  escape. 

This  father  is  the  type  of  a  very  large 
class  of  persons  who  mean  well.  Instead 
of  cultivating  formative  justice  as  their 
habit  of  mind,  however,  they  cultivate 
retribution  or  punishment  as  their  habit 
of  mind,   and  hence  contribute  to  the 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  177 

world  those  elements  which  make  for  dis- 
content and  disruption  instead  of  the 
brotherhood  or  moral  unity  of  society. 

We  see  the  boy  committing  theft  not 
for  plunder  but  as  an  outlet  for  his  pent- 
up  interests  and  energies.  We  have  no 
record  of  the  parents'  life  and  treatment 
of  the  boy  prior  to  this  occurrence.  If 
we  had,  we  might  find  them  directly 
guilty  of  that  '^contributory  delinquency" 
which  Judge  Lindsey  of  Denver  so  ex- 
posed as  a  cause  of  juvenile  error. 

My  own  doctrine  has  long  been  that 
every  parent  is  at  least  indirectly  his 
erring  child's  contributory  delinquent. 
Many  parents  apprehending  this  truth  in 
a  degree,  think  to  save  themselves  by 
avoiding  something  which  they  call  'in- 
dulgence" and  by  making  repression,  re- 
striction, interference,  and  castigation 
their  habit  of  mind.  Did  they  but  know 
it,  they  more  easily  become  contributory 
delinquents  through  this  habit  than 
through  that  of  ''justice" — ^which  con- 
cedes to  the  child  his  right  to  self-devel- 


178  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

opment  under  a  suggestive  environment. 

Judge  Lindsey  was  the  first  judge  to 
send  a  father  to  jail  for  lack  of  proper 
companionship  with  his  son.  He  has 
saved  many  a  boy  and  girl  by  going  back 
of  their  deeds  to  the  parents  and  punish- 
ing them.  When  street  waifs  of  either 
sex  discover  that  the  judge  means  to 
give  them  **a  square  deal,"  he  virtually 
has  them  in  complete  control.  So  great 
is  the  power  of  just  dealing  that  this  in- 
spired judge  can  send  accused  boys  to  the 
industrial  school  or  place  of  detention 
without  an  officer.  The  culprits  take 
their  own  commitment  papers  and  the 
money,  and  go  alone. 

Of  children  who  have  been  found  guilty 
of  crimes  which  in  other  days  or  in  other 
places  would  send  them  to  a  reformatory 
or  prison  Judge  Lindsey  says,  "It  is  not 
right  to  brand  these  children  with  the 
name  of  criminals  when  they  are  for  the 
most  part  enterprising  youths  who  have 
not  been  taught  an  ideal  right  doing." 

Commitment  is  a  last  resort  and  is  often 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  179 

at  the  request  of  the  culprits  themselves. 
But  the  Judge  makes  It  plain  that  he  Is 
not  angry,  but  wants  to  keep  them  from 
growing  up  **bums"  and  outcasts.  He 
wants  them  to  live  on  their  honour. 
Sometimes  he  takes  the  boys  to  his  own 
home  and  sends  for  the  mothers  too. 
His  good  mother  says,  **He  Is  harder  on 
the  mothers  who  go  to  parties  and  clubs 
and  neglect  their  children  than  he  Is  on 
the  ones  who  get  drunk  even."  ^ 

It  is  some  years  since  Judge  Lindsey 
became  inspired  with  the  truth  that  a 
large  proportion  of  the  criminals  who 
are  an  expense  and  a  menace  to  society 
Is  but  a  natural  boomerang — a  return 
upon  society  of  Its  own  unjust  treat- 
ment of  children  and  youth.  Berenger, 
the  author  of  the  famous  French 
Berenger  law,  arrived  at  the  conclusion 
that  the  laws  and  the  penal  Institu- 
tions were  largely  responsible  for  the 
increase  in  the  number  of  criminals.    His 

'  Reported  in   The   World  To-Day. 


i8o  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

law  is  very  easy  on  the  new  offender.  In 
more  than  ten  years  of  its  operation  the 
number  of  second  offences  has  been 
greatly  reduced. 

Victims  of  an  unwholesome  and  evilly 
suggestive  environment,  victims  of  unjust 
judgment,  whose  cases  are  never  truly 
heard — here,  is  the  condition  to  be  met, 
rather  than  anything  self-determinedly 
bad.  In  such  a  case  youth  needs  a  friend 
— and  needs  to  see  that  he  is  truly 
friendly.  Crime  is  not  to  be  made  light 
of  or  justified,  but  into  the  judgment  of 
it  enters  the  way  which  has  made  crime 
easy  to  pliant  youth. 

The  old  and  the  new  methods  have  been 
so  well  put  that  I  quote  at  length  :^ 

Heretofore  the  state  has  been  concerned 
with  the  reclamation  of  stolen  property 
and  the  punishing  of  criminals,  without 
any  due  regard  to  the  salvation  of  the 
little  offenders.  As  a  result  children  have 
been  arrested,  disgraced,  imprisoned  and 
allowed  to  mingle  with  hardened  crim- 

'  Editorial  in  The  Arena ^  April,  1906. 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  i8i 

inals;  and  often  the  slight  offender  has 
through  this  cruel  and  unjust  process  be- 
come a  confirmed  law-breaker,  a  menace 
to  society,  a  constant  expense  to  the  state, 
and  a  curse  to  his  family  and  to  himself. 

All  this,  so  far  as  Denver  is  concerned, 
is  past,  and  the  results  that  have  followed 
have  more  than  justified  the  most  san- 
guine expectations  of  Judge  Lindsey  and 
his  co-workers.  Hundreds  upon  hun- 
dreds of  children  have  been  saved  to  the 
state  without  the  humiliation  and  degra- 
dation attending  the  old  methods.  Hun- 
dreds of  children  are  to-day  among  the 
brightest  and  most  promising  of  Denver's 
young  citizens  who  under  the  old  system 
would  have  been  in  reform-schools  or 
prisons,  or  Ishmaelites  of  civilisation, 
embittered  by  the  deep  conviction  that 
the  state  was  their  enemy  and  with  the 
feeling  that  they  had  little  or  no  chance 
of  a  fair  show  in  life. 

Often  children  innocent  of  some  offence 
charged  against  them,  but  with  a  ques- 
tionable record,  are  haled  before  the 
court.  Under  the  old  system  they  were 
quickly  examined,  judged,  and  punished, 
with  the  result  that  the  child  was  dis- 
graced for  a  crime  he  did  not  commit. 


1 82  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

He  thus  hated  the  state  because  the  state 
had  been  unjust  to  him.  He  went  forth 
from  the  reform-school  ruined.  Hence- 
forth society  had  an  Ishmael  to  deal  with, 
while  under  just  and  loving  treatment  he 
might  have  become  a  high-minded  and 
useful  citizen.  Let  us  illustrate  with  a 
typical  case : 

One  day  a  boy  was  brought  to  court  by 
a  judge  and  a  physician  who  lodged  the 
complaint.  The  judge  insisted  that  the 
prisoner  had  thrown  a  stone  through 
the  car  window  as  the  car  passed  the 
school-yard.  The  judge's  face  was  badly 
cut,  and  both  he  and  the  physician  in- 
sisted that  they  saw  the  boy  who  had 
been  arrested  commit  the  offence.  Judge 
Lindsey  examined  the  boy  in  private. 
The  lad  freely  confessed  to  many  misde- 
meanours, but  stoutly  affirmed  that  he 
was  not  the  one  who  threw  the  stone.  As 
a  result  of  a  thorough  questioning  Judge 
Lindsey  became  convinced  that  the  boy 
was  telling  the  truth.  He  returned  to 
the  accusers  and  amazed  them  by  telling 
them  that  he  was  morally  certain  that  the 
boy  was  innocent.  They  immediately 
demanded  that  he  find  the  guilty  one. 
He  set  out  for  the  school  which  was  the 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  183 

scene  of  the  offence.  Here  he  explained 
to  the  boys  that  he  was  in  trouble;  that 
he  was  not  willing  to  have  an  innocent 
boy  judged  guilty  of  an  offence  that  he 
believed  the  prisoner  did  not  commit; 
and  he  appealed  to  the  youths  present  to 
help  him  out  of  his  trouble.  He  asked 
the  one  who  really  cast  the  stone  to  con- 
fess. After  this  heart-to-heart  talk  one 
little  fellow  rose  and  said:  **J^dge,  I 
heaved  the  stone." 

Scores  of  other  cases  could  be  cited 
showing  that  under  the  old  method  the 
innocent  child  would  have  been  judged 
guilty,  all  because  of  the  criminal  indif- 
ference of  judges  and  of  society  to  the 
tremendous  importance  of  punishing  only 
the  guilty  and  of  saving  the  young  to  the 
state  instead  of  making  them  enemies  of 
the  state  and  a  curse  and  an  expense  to 
society. 

In  the  case  of  the  misjudgment  by  a 
teacher  of  the  present  author  when  a 
schoolboy,  suppose  the  erring  professor 
had  taken  the  pains  that  Judge  Lindsey 
took  in  this  case,  how  different  the  result ! 

That  children  in  unfavourable  environ- 
ments are  longing  for  help  to  do  better 


1 84  THE    CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that  Judge  Llnd- 
sey  has  them  coming  to  him  by  the  hun- 
dred seeking  aid  and  protection.  And 
that  boys  can  be  trusted  when  they  see 
that  they  are  trusted  and  justly  regarded, 
is  shown  from  the  following  incident, 
which  I  quote  also  from  the  editor  of 
The  Arena: 

Six  years  ago  many  of  the  boys  in  the 
state  industrial  school  were  seen  in  the 
yards  with  balls  and  chains  attached  to 
prevent  them  from  running  away.  Un- 
der the  new  order  all  this  has  been 
changed.  When  the  Grand  Army  en- 
camped at  Denver  the  boys  in  the 
reform-school  naturally  longed  to  be 
present  to  see  the  soldiers,  to  hear  the 
music  and  to  behold  the  city  in  gala  dress. 
Judge  Lindsey  proposed  to  give  them  the 
opportunity  to  spend  the  day  in  Denver 
under  no  surveillance  and  with  no  pledge 
other  than  their  own  word  given  to  him 
that  they  would  return  voluntarily  to  the 
school  at  a  certain  hour.  The  believers 
in  the  old  order  were  horrified  at  the 
proposition.  They  deemed  it  reckless. 
They  did  not  understand  the  new  spirit 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  185 

that  had  come  with  the  inauguration  of  a 
system  of  divine  justice  or  justice  illu- 
mined by  love.  The  judge  went  to  the 
boys  and  said:  **Boys,  how  many  of  you 
would  like  to  go  to  Denver  and  spend 
the  day?''  Of  course  the  whole  school 
was  eager  for  the  great  holiday.  Then 
the  judge  told  them  that  he  believed  in 
them;  he  believed  that  no  boy  in  the 
school  would  give  him  a  pledge  and  then 
break  it ;  and  believing  that,  he  had  given 
his  pledge  that  every  boy  would  be  back 
in  his  place  at  a  certain  hour  if  they  were 
allowed  to  go.  All  the  boys  promised 
and  the  school  of  over  two  hundred  went 
to  Denver,  and  every  boy  returned  at  the 
appointed  time. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  boy  sent  alone  to 
the  reform-school  at  Utah  discovered  a 
court  officer  shadowing  him.  The  boy 
had  given  his  word  that  if  trusted  and 
sent  unattended  he  would  go  to  the  re- 
formatory. He  went  and  bought  his 
ticket  and  was  waiting  for  the  train  when 
he  sighted  an  officer  watching  him  from 
a  distance.  The  natural,  let  us  say,  per- 
haps, the  just,  result  was  that  he  threw 


1 86  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

away  his  ticket  and  fled.  When  caught, 
he  declared  that  he  had  no  intention  of 
escaping  until  he  saw  that  the  state  was 
breaking  faith  with  him  by  distrustfully 
watching  him. 

I  cite  Lindsey's  methods  as  illustrations 
easily  at  hand  to  show  what  can  be  done. 
And  if  such  results  can  be  accomplished 
by  a  judge  of  the  court,  what  may  not 
parents  upon  similarly  just  principles  ac- 
complish at  home?  The  juvenile  court 
might  almost  go  out  of  business  if  every 
father  would  follow  his  methods  of  win- 
ning and  of  deserving  confidence  through 
love's  sympathetic  arm  of  justice. 

In  young  children — say  under  ten  years 
of  age — we  often  see  the  sense  of  justice 
acting  as  critic,  not  belligerently,  but  sim- 
ply in  wonderment  at  the  absence  of 
equity  and  fairness: 

A  little  girl  of  ten  on  handing  her 
monthly  school  report  to  her  parents  re- 
marked, "Our  reports  are  awfully  funny. 
If  you  stay  away  you  get  a  better  mark 
than  if  you  are  there." 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  187 

A  child  of  nine  told  her  father  that  her 
Sunday-school  teacher  had  marked  two 
children  in  the  class  **good''  when  they 
were  bad.  **Last  Sunday,"  she  said, 
she  marked  them  good  because  they 
didn't  know  they  were  doing  what  they 
oughtn't  and  so  she  wouldn't  count  it 
against  them,  but  next  Sunday  she  would 
mark  them  bad  if  they  acted  the  same 
way.  And  now  she  marked  them  good 
when  they  were  just  as  bad."  The  child 
evidently  approved  the  equity  of  the 
first  marking,  but  not  the  equity  of  the 
second.  The  child  was  absolutely  free 
from  jealousy. 

A  teacher  in  a  class  of  older  girls  than 
the  foregoing  made  it  a  point  that  every 
girl  had  a  right  to  know  how  she  stood  and 
why.  She  was  notoriously  uneven  in  her 
marking,  and  when  she  was  asked  to  ex- 
plain the  record  she  charged  the  girls  with 
insulting  her  by  doubting  her  fairness. 

These  are  all  typical  cases  and  are  in- 
troduced here  not  for  novelty,  but  as 
warnings  to  teachers  against  even  the 


i88  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

appearance  of  injustice  in  matters  that 
look  possibly  transient  and  slight. 

It  is  the  business  of  justice  to  interro- 
gate the  case,  and  this  is  not  always  easy. 
Not  only  is  suspended  judgment  essen- 
tial on  the  main  question,  but  one  must 
be  careful  to  be  fair  in  the  very  language 
in  which  he  addresses  himself  to  the  sub- 
ject under  examination.  This  applies  to 
critics  of  all  kinds — for  a  critic's  office  is 
judicial.  It  applies  equally  to  the  chief 
justice  on  the  bench,  to  the  mother  in 
the  nursery,  to  the  book  reviewer,  and  to 
the  hearer  of  a  public  speaker. 

It  has  been  wisely  said^  that  we  should 
attempt  no  paraphrase  of  an  opponent's 
views,  and  that  in  characterising  an- 
other's doctrine  we  should  never  affix 
such  adjectives  as  **mere,"  "bare," 
'*dead,"  '^abstract,"  etc.,  which  bias  the 
case  before  it  is  fairly  heard.  To  be  just 
in  discussion  is  exceedingly  difficult,  and 

*  **  Article  on  Belligerent  Discussion  and  Truth 
Seeking,"  International  yournal  of  Ethics ^  by 
Richard  C.  Cabot. 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  189 

IS  to  be  accomplished  only  through  what 
Mr.  Cabot  calls  **the  inclusive  attitude" 
— that  is,  the  enlargement  of  our  ideas 
so  as  to  include  our  opponent's  doctrine, 
to  the  extent  that  we  feel  a  strong  ten- 
dency to  accept  it.  Otherwise,  we  ex- 
clude ourselves  from  legitimate  and  fair 
discussion,  by  putting  our  opponent's 
plea  out  of  the  range  of  our  own  vision. 

In  our  judgments  of  children  we  are 
habitually  guilty  of  this  self-exclusion. 
Whatever  the  young  child  does,  there 
is  at  least  a  partly  legitimate  reason  for 
his  doing,  and  this  we  should  see  and  as- 
sent to  in  order  to  acquire  the  inclusive 
attitude.  Moreover,  the  catalogue  of 
adjectives  by  which  we  prejudice  the 
child's  case  in  our  own  view  of  it  is  large 
and  luring.  All  such  terms  as  **disobedi- 
ent,"  *Vilful,"  ^'stupid,"  **cruel," 
"naughty,"  *4ndolent,"  "incorrigible," 
etc.,  are  snares  to  unjust  judgments  and 
unwise  dealing.^ 

*  This  is  more  fully  treated  in   the   **  Fireside 
Child  Study." 


190  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

Surely  enough  has  now  been  said  by 
way  of  illustration  and  exemplification  to 
show  how  theory  may  be  translated  into 
practice  by  thinking  justice  as  a  habit  of 
mind  acquired  with  a  definite  view  to  the 
common  good. 

It  is  worth  while,  however,  to  add  a  few 
words  on  a  more  didactic  teaching  of  jus- 
tice than  that  of  being  merely  just  to  the 
children  themselves.  This  is,  of  course, 
to  be  done  through  appeals  to  their  sense 
of  fairness,  through  story,  and  through 
their  attitude  toward  the  brutes. 

Queen  Victoria  is  quoted  as  saying  that 
**No  civilisation  is  complete  which  does 
not  include  the  dumb  and  defenceless  of 
God's  creatures  within  the  sphere  of 
charity  and  mercy."  We  have  already 
seen  that  in  the  Scriptural  and  in  the 
modern  sociological  sense  charity  is  jus- 
tice. And  it  has  been  argued  in  this  book 
that  mercy  is  justice  in  the  making — just 
in  motive,  but  with  a  conscious  ignorance 
of  conditions.  We  may,  therefore,  sub- 
stitute the  word  **justice"  for  **charity 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  191 

and  mercy"  in  the  good  queen's  declara- 
tion. 
As  an  illustration  of  practice  in  discern- 
ment of  the  equity  of  a  brute's  case  an  ex- 
cellent little  story  appeared  some  years 
ago,^  the  essential  points  of  which  were 
about  thus :  A  little  girl,  Jennie,  had  been 
switching  her  kitty  for  catching  and  eat- 
ing a  bird.  When  Lena  took  Jennie  to 
task  for  her  treatment  of  the  cat,  Jennie 
took  Lena  to  task  for  not  loving  the  inno- 
cent little  birds.  Lena  contended  that 
she  did  love  the  birds,  but  that  she  would 
never  think  of  blaming  a  cat  for  catching 
them.  Jennie's  cat  was  trying  to  provide 
for  six  little  kittens,  and  it  was  her  mother 
instinct  that  led  her  to  get  all  the  food 
she  could.  On  the  other  hand,  Lena 
could  not  bear  to  see  girls'  hats  orna- 
mented with  birds,  while  Jennie  con- 
fessed her  weakness  for  the  beauty  of 
that  kind  of  millinery.  Lena  took  the 
'^inclusive    attitude."       She    saw    from 

*  **The  Rights  of  Pussy,"  in  The  Sunday  School 
Times,  January   14,    1899,  by  Mary  S.  Potter. 


I9»  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

Jennie's  and  the  cat's  points  of  view — 
and  was  fair. 

Homely  as  the  story  is,  it  indicates  a 
line  of  training  toward  just  discrimina- 
tion, a  suspended  judgment  and  the  all- 
round  sympathy  that  true  equity  and  the 
universal  good  demands. 

Thus  we  may  train  the  young  into  a 
more  virile  morality,  and  a  better  citizen- 
ship, both  by  practising  the  art  of  just 
discrimination,  as  well  as  by  being  just 
in  our  own  judgments  of  others. 

Indeed,  the  further  we  go  into  the  inves- 
tigation of  animal  life,  the  more  ex- 
tended do  we  find  the  truth  that  all  na- 
ture seeks  its  own  conservation  and  prog- 
ress by  the  maintenance  of  peace  and  co- 
operative relations  between  individuals. 
Strife  is  not  the  natural  law  even  of  wild 
life.^ 

Animals  of  the  same  species  at  least 
tend  toward  the  maintenance  of  mutual 
and  cooperative  social  relations.     Ants, 

'  ♦* Government  not  Founded  in  Force,"  by 
Leander  Chamberlain. 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  193 

bees,  birds,  and  many  mammals  furnish 
evidence  of  this.  Animal  life  suffers 
from  the  inanimate  powers  of  nature,  but 
Mr.  Chamberlain  ventures  that  even 
among  mammals  not  one  in  fifty  perishes 
by  the  attack  of  predacious  enemies. 
Man  is  the  predatory  and  destructive 
animal.  Man  is  at  once  capable  of  reach- 
ing the  highest  degree  of  social  union 
or  brotherly  cooperation,  and  of  sink- 
ing to  the  lowest  level  of  a  selfish,  anti- 
social, unbrotherly  and  destructive  spirit. 
Within  his  own  species,  the  beast  is 
moral;  within  his,  man  is  perpetually 
falling  into  immorality — despite  his  op- 
portunities. 

It  would  be  interesting,  if  it  were  pos- 
sible, to  count  how  many  points  toward 
deterioration  from  a  just  habit  of  mind 
result  from  the  passion  for  unfair  kill- 
ing-sports, that  is,  where  mere  sport  is 
the  sole  motive.  War,  as  we  have  seen, 
certainly  tends  to  obliterate  the  power 
of  rendering  just  judgments.  Perhaps 
this  may  be  reckoned  as  one  of  the  chief 


194  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

residual  moral  evils  of  offensive  wars,  or 
conflicts  for  conquest — if  not  for  all 
wars.  It  is  often  said  that  the  demoralis- 
ing effects  of  war  remain  long  after  the 
conclusion  of  peace.  But  the  benumbing 
and  the  warping  of  the  sense  of  justice  is 
not  usually  thought  of  as  a  chief  of  moral 
evils. 

Now  in  general,  and  in  the  retrospect: 

The  first  immorality  is  trespass  on  the 
rights  of  another — appropriating  his 
property  or  interfering  with  his  powers. 
This  is  the  allegory  of  Eden.  In  this 
view  we  have  seen  that  the  violation  of 
any  of  the  last  six  commandments,  any 
or  all,  is  a  violation  of  justice. 

Therefore,  we  must  be  watchful  against 
loose  and  easy-going  moral  interpreta- 
tions— the  blurring  of  boundary  lines — 
trespass  in  any  wise. 

We  must  respect  the  child's  sense  of 
possession,  since  out  of  it  grows  his 
sense  of  duty  to  the  possession  of  others. 
He  must  not  be  too  strenuously  per- 
suaded to  give  up  a  favourite  toy  even 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  195 

for  charity's  sake.  How  can  you  teach 
the  duty  of  giving  to  any  one  who  has 
nothing  to  give?  He  can  give  his 
powers  even  though  he  has  no  property 
to  bestow.  But  how  can  he  appro- 
priate powers  when,  by  superior  force, 
you  take  virtual  possession  of  them 
under  the  name  of  authority?  Instant, 
mechanical,  unconditional  obedience, 
what  sense  of  possession  does  it  permit? 
The  sense  of  justice  is  offended  and  rebel- 
lion follows.  Then  offended  justice 
looses  its  hold  on  social  order,  becomes 
itself  unjust — as  Sophomores  haze  be- 
cause they  were  hazed,  and  fathers  whip 
because  they  were  whipped. 

No  one  thing  is  so  patently  a  type  of 
possession  as  money.  Train  the  mind 
to  talk  honourably  about  other  people's 
money.  Train  the  hands  to  handle  other 
people's  money.  On  this  point  more 
hereafter. 

Create  contempt  for  the  spirit  of  get- 
ting something  for  nothing — do  it  in- 
directly.    Evidence  your  respect  for  the 


196  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

rule  of  suspended  judgment  by  refusing 
to  condemn  others  until  the  case  has  been 
heard  beyond  mere  rumour.  Be  careful 
that  ethics  is  not  set  against  itself — de- 
fending the  wrong  by  ingenious  appeals 
to,  and  the  misapplication  of  the  names 
of  virtues. 

Then  practise  the  finer  shadings,  the 
nicer  discriminations.  The  sense  of  per- 
sonal rights  must  suffer  modification. 
Justice-culture,  through  proprietorship, 
must  concede  the  truth  that  nothing  is 
altogether  one's  own,  for  we  have  an  in- 
heritance from  the  past  which  is  the  com- 
mon property  of  the  ages.  The  very 
language  in  which  we  think  and  express 
ourselves  is  a  common  property,  and 
nothing  is  exclusively  one's  own.  Jus- 
tice must  take  the  larger  view.  Rights 
and  duties  appear  simply  as  different  as- 
pects of  the  human  bond  and  the  human 
obligation. 

**The  deeper  and  larger  sense  of  social 
duty,"  as  Charlotte  Perkins  Oilman  says 
— **not  the  personal  balancing  of  rights, 


SPECIMEN  APPLICATIONS  197 

which  IS  easy  to  even  the  youngest  mind, 
but  the  devotion  to  the  service  of  all,  the 
recognition  that  the  greater  includes  the 
less — this  must  be  shown  by  personal  ex- 
ample long  before  it  can  be  imitated."^ 

*  ** Concerning  Children,"  p.  112. 


VIII 

LOYALTY  VS.  OBEDIENCE 

A  MOTHER  having  an  errand  to  go,  just 
before  dark,  told  her  little  girl  to  see  that 
all  the  chickens  were  housed  before  she 
went  indoors.  The  father,  not  knowing 
of  the  mother's  order,  as  darkness  ap- 
proached appeared  at  the  door  and  told 
the  child  to  come  in.  There  was  one 
stubborn  fowl  yet  uncaged,  and  the  child 
replied  that  she  would  come  in  a  min- 
ute. The  bird  gave  her  some  trouble, 
and  when  again  the  father  appeared  it 
was  with  an  imperative  order  and  a  repri- 
mand for  disobedience.  When  the 
mother  returned,  she  found  the  daughter 
searching  the  Scriptures  in  order  to  see 
whether  there  was  any  prescription  there 
for  honouring  both  parents  when  their 
orders  conflicted.    She  had  turned  to  the 


LOYALTY  vs.  OBEDIENCE  199 

book  of  Ephesians,  and  when  discovered 
was  puzzling  over  Paul's  recommenda- 
tion, **Children,  obey  your  parents,  in  the 
Lord,  for  this  is  right." 

Manifestly,  obedience  to  both  was  im- 
possible. She  was  looking  for  the  key  to 
a  deadlock.  There  must  be  such  a  thing 
as  a  just  and  proper  disobedience  and  an 
unjust  and  improper  obedience.  She  had 
no  ground  to  stand  on.  That  she  felt 
the  injustice  of  the  situation,  however  in- 
nocent of  such  intent  the  parents  were, 
there  can  be  no  doubt.  Mere  obedience, 
in  view  of  the  possibility  of  such  a 
dilemma,  cannot  be  a  virtue  per  se. 

Shocking  as  this  is  to  most  good  per- 
sons, who  can  solve  that  conscientious 
child's  problem?  How  could  she  obey 
two  conflicting  orders?  Were  not  both 
parents  of  equal  authority? 

Many  will  contend  that  parents  muist 
see  to  it  that  they  are  not  in  conflict. 
But  that  is  another  subject.  The  simple 
point  is  that  if  obedience  per  se  were  a 
duty,  then  the  child  had  a  duty  of  do- 


200  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

ing  two  contrary  things  at  once,  which  is 
the  injustice  of  absurdity. 

Human  fallibility,  then,  is  a  factor  to 
be  considered.  There  can  be  no  ques- 
tion but  that  obedience  to  God  is  per  se  a 
duty,  for  God  is  always  right.  Yet  so 
important  was  it  that  man  should  learn 
the  art  of  living  equitably  with  men,  that 
the  story  of  Eden  really  turns  upon  this 
moral  art,  however  true  it  may  be  that 
Adam  was  disobedient.^  Regard  that 
story  as  literal  or  allegorical  as  you 
please,  its  pivotal  point  is  ethical,  even 
though  God  was  one  of  the  parties  to  the 
transaction.  It  rests  on  the  basal  social 
virtue — that  of  rendering  to  every  one 
his  own.  Obedience  is  incidental  to  it. 
Otherwise,  the  transaction  seems  to  have 
been  unnecessary. 

If  the  world  was  to  be  peopled  and 
men  were  to  live  harmoniously  and  co- 
operatively with  men,  it  was  important 
that  they   should   understand  the  very 

^  Sec  Matheson's  exposition  Chapter.    III. 


LOYALTY  vs.  OBEDIENCE  aoi 

fundament  of  this  social-moral  life  at  the 
start.  This  was  the  childhood  of  the 
race. 

Very  aptly  does  Dr.  Matheson  pursue 
his  exposition  thus:  *'You  cannot  teach 
your  child  morality  by  teaching  it  obedi- 
ence. .  .  .  Obedience  is  not  the  begin- 
ning of  a  child's  morality.  What  is  the 
beginning  of  a  child's  morality?  I  say 
it  is  justice,  the  inculcation  of  fair  play. 
Whether  in  the  garden  or  in  the  play- 
ground, it  is  the  primary  moral  lesson  of 
youth.  The  dtference  between  his  and 
yours  is  the  first  thing  which  your  child 
should  know.  Let  him  see  the  limits  of 
his  own  Eden.  .  .  .  Never  prohibit  for 
the  sake  of  prohibition.  .  .  .  Prohibi- 
tion in  itself  is  not  helpful  .  .  .  but  jus- 
tice is  helpful.  Justice  sanctifies  prohibi- 
tion. .  .  .  The  temptation  of  young 
Adam  is  the  temptation  to  his  justice; 
the  fall  of  young  Adam  is  his  fall  from 
the  height  of  justice." 

In  this  view,  the  first  sin  is  the  sin  of 
violated  human  rights — or  immorality. 


2oa  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

The  child's  first  conscious  relations  are 
human  relations.  From  these  he  works 
out  to  a  clearer  sense  of  his  relations  to 
God.  This  is  why  the  lesson  of  Eden 
was  primarily  social-moral. 

It  is  true,  then,  as  Matheson  insists, 
that  obedience,  per  se,  is  not  the  begin- 
ning of  a  child's  morality.  A  child  may 
obey  a  very  immoral  command  to  the  let- 
ter. Is  the  act  then  moral?  If  not,  it 
must  be  true  that  '*you  cannot  teach  your 
child  morality  by  teaching  it  obedience" 
to  fallible  humanity.  You  must  rest 
your  moral  education  on  something  else, 
and  the  story  of  Eden  shows  that  we 
must  rest  it  on  justice — or  the  rule  of 
mine  and  yours. 

"Those  who  trespass  against  us"  are 
the  immoral  ones,  and  our  morality  be- 
gins by  obeying  this  moral  law  of 
boundary.  In  this  we  become  coopera- 
tive, interdependent,  brotherly.  We 
render  unto  every  one  his  own  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  common  good. 

Now  absolute,  instant,  unqualified  obe- 


LOYALTY  vs.  OBEDIENCE  aoj 

dience  we  must  often  exact  from  children 
and  from  men;  that  is  one  thing.  But 
this  does  not  make  obedience  to  fallible 
man  the  fundament  of  morals;  that  is 
another  thing.  Authority  we  must  have ; 
that  is  one  thing.  But  human  authority 
may  be  exerted  immorally;  that  is  an- 
other thing.  Our  relations  to  an  infalli- 
ble God  as  obedient  children  we  are  not 
now  considering. 

The  great  mistake  that  parents  make  is 
in  supposing  that  when  a  child  executes 
an  order  immediately  and  to  the  letter  he 
is  thereby  obedient  in  soul  as  well  as  in 
body ;  and  that  he  is,  therefore,  develop- 
ing a  moral  discipline.  It  is  possible  to 
be  obedient  and  rebellious  at  the  same 
moment.  Here  emerges  the  important 
distinction  between  the  obedience  that  is 
only  mechanical  response  and  the  obedi- 
ence that  is  heart  loyalty. 

It  is  this  loyalty  that  love's  justice  really 
wants.  The  child  cited  at  the  opening 
of  this  chapter  was  loyal  to  both  parents ; 
obedient  to  both  she  could  not  be.    Her 


204  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

Spiritual  loyalty  was  fine.  There  lay  the 
test  of  love's  morality.  She  studied  to 
please  and  to  serve  both,  but  without  full 
obedience  to  either.  Set  your  heart  on 
this  result,  O  parent,  without  fretting 
yourself  about  the  literal  response,  loyal 
or  disloyal. 

This  Is  no  plea  for  the  abandonment  of 
parental  or  any  other  form  of  govern- 
mental authority.  Nor  Is  It  to  encourage 
children  to  be  the  '^arbiters  of  their  own 
conduct"  or  to  steer  their  canoes  by  a 
pocket  compass  of  their  own  construction 
— as  Dr.  Parkhurst  vividly  puts  It.  This 
Is  not  written  for  children. 

But  It  Is  to  controvert  the  same  able 
critic  when  he  says  that  **the  best  and 
most  fundamental  lesson  a  child  ever 
learns  Is  to  obey."  If  the  argument  of 
this  book,  with  the  authorities  It  quotes, 
is  worth  anything,  the  most  fundamental 
moral  lesson  Is  that  of  fair  play,  of  jus- 
tice, of  mine  and  yours^  of  a  reciprocal 
brotherly  unity. 

The  loyalty  of  soul  to  this  immutable 


LOYALTY  vs.  OBEDIENCE  205 

law  of  justice,  the  rendering  unto  every- 
one his  own  in  the  larger  interest  of  the 
universal  good,  is  better  than  a  blind, 
servile,  and  unfeeling  obedience  to  hu- 
man caprice,  whim  or  notion,  necessary 
as  that  servility,  in  our  imperfect  social 
conditions,  may  even  be. 

The  short  road  to  securing  this  spiritual 
obedience  of  loyalty  is  the  loving  heart 
enlightened  by  the  wisdom  of  justice. 
The  parent  or  teacher  whose  course 
grows  out  of  the  just  habit  of  mind  will 
not  need  to  worry  much  about  the  secur- 
ing of  obedience.  The  child  is  quick  to 
resent  injustice,  and  this  resentment 
means  a  weakening  of  the  spirit  of 
loyalty.  No  less  quick  is  the  child  to  re- 
spond to  a  manifest  desire  of  the  parent 
or  teacher  to  be  fair;  which  means 
a  strengthening  of  the  loyal  spirit  or  true 
heart  obedience.  This  is  the  very  essence 
of  freedom  under  law,  or  liberty,  which 
Dr.  Parkhurst  finely  says  is  "a  genius  for 
obeying,  and  consists  not  in  our  success- 
ful escape  from  ordinance,  but  in  the 


2o6  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

graceful  facility  with  which  we  are  able 
to  execute  it."  That  is,  the  spirit  of  jus- 
tice recognises  the  social  will  as  above 
that  of  the  individual  and  the  common 
good  as  returning  to  bring  the  highest 
good  to  the  individual. 

Obedience,  in  the  common  sense  of 
literal  response  to  orders,  is  sometimes 
right  and  sometimes  wrong  and  some- 
times impossible.  It  may  be  necessary 
and  may  be  unnecessary  or  positively  in- 
advisable. The  Japanese  success  against 
Russia  was  in  part  due  to  a  certain 
amount  of  initiative  allowed  to  the  under 
ranks.  As  a  whole  the  army  was  a  solid 
mechanism,  but  without  making  mere 
obeying  machines  of  the  individuals 
when  the  use  of  their  own  judgment 
could  increase  their  efficiency  and  respon- 
sibility. 

But  young  children  have  no  developed 
judgment.  Very  true.  That  throws  a 
larger  responsibility  on  their  overseers  to 
be  absolutely  just  and  in  all  respects  to 
stand  for  sanity  and  social  order.    This 


LOYALTY  vs.  OBEDIENCE  107 

begets  the  loyalty  that  should  be.  We 
have  a  weakness  for  commanding,  for 
being  obeyed.  To  see  a  child  or  a  dog 
do  exactly  as  we  say  flatters  our  sense  of 
power  and  self-importance.  The  result 
is,  we  command  too  easily  and  therefore 
issue  many  commands  which  were  far 
better  not  obeyed.  But  as  the  children 
cannot  be  the  arbiters  in  such  cases,  we 
must  cultivate  the  habit  of  thinking  and 
executing  justice  before  we  indulge  the 
slippery  habit  of  command.  We  must 
study  to  give  no  command  the  obedience 
to  which  would  not  be  in  the  highest  de- 
gree righteous. 

We  must  not  study  our  own  ease  in 
governing,  but  the  child's  growth  toward 
self-government.  This  will  come  back 
to  us  in  ease  to  ourselves  as  well  as  in 
development  to  the  child. 

Our  relation  to  the  child  must  be  the 
same  as  our  relation  to  society — recipro- 
cal and  cooperative.  We  must  work  with 
him  instead  of  against  him.  When  he 
sees  that  we  are  in  community  of  inter- 


2o8  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

ests,  he  will  show  a  loyal  deference  to  our 
larger  experience.  Obedience  must  be 
mutual.  We  have  no  right  to  command 
except  we  first  obey  the  laws  of  God  and 
of  man  and  the  laws  of  the  child's  devel- 
oping nature.  When  we  become  thus 
obedient,  we  may  expect  that  higher 
obedience  which  is  heart  loyalty  from  the 
child  toward  his  justice-loving  superiors. 
Child  nature,  like  all  nature,  is  com- 
manded by  obeying  it.  Obedience  to 
Heaven's  fundamental  law?  Yes! 
Obedience  to  whimsical,  self-important, 
fallible,  unjust  men?    Sometimes. 


IX 

FAILURE  AND  IMMORALITY  OF  CORPORAL 
PUNISHMENT 

The  question  of  corporal  punishment  is 
one  on  which  pretty  much  everybody 
holds  a  ready-to-Tiand  opinion.  That 
punishment  of  any  sort  should  be  such  a 
familiar  subject  to  all  sorts  and  condi- 
tions of  men  is  to  be  lamented.  If  it  were 
a  rare  and  exceptional  thought  among 
parents  there  would  be  less  need  of  it, 
and  if  there  were  less  need  of  it  in  the 
home,  the  same  would  be  true  of  the 
state. 

The  pity  is  that  the  more  conscientious 
and  consecrated  an  inexperienced  young 
parent,  the  more  likely  is  he  to  think  of 
himself  as  a  commissioned  punisher. 
That  punishment  is  necessary  in  this  fal- 
lible and  unjust  world  is  true  enough. 


aio  THE   CULTURE   OF   JUSTICE 

But  it  Is  no  less  true  that  much  of  its 
necessity  grows  out  of  the  universal  ten- 
dency and  temptation  to  rely  on  it  as  the 
great  moral  specific.  Punishment  must 
be  regarded  as  a  drug  whose  usefulness 
on  occasion  may  beget  its  own  incurable 
habit. 

This  book  stands  for  prevention.  If 
children  were  treated  justly  from  the 
start — if  parental  love  would  consent  to 
be  enlightened,  guided,  or  advised  by  the 
principle  of  constructive  justice,  the  need 
of  punishment  would  be  immensely  re- 
duced and  two  or  three  generations 
would  find  society  a  very  different  moral 
proposition  from  what  it  is  to-day. 

The  matter  of  punishment  in  general  is 
too  large  for  treatment  here.  Suffice  It 
that  we  consider  briefly  the  vexed  ques- 
tion of  corporal  punishment. 

It  would  seem  to  be  self-evident  that  no 
parent  ought  to  punish  without  a  distinct 
purpose  in  view.  Shall  this  purpose  be 
personal  revenge,  or  shall  it  be  to  pro- 
tect society  by  preventing  a  repetition  of 


FAILURE  OF  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENT       211 

the  offence,  or  is  the  moral  improvement 
of  the  child  to  be  the  conscious  intent? 
Punishment  may  be  merely  deterrent,  to 
prevent  annoyance  to  the  parent  or 
others  without  any  real  motive  of  moral 
formation  or  reformation. 

Most  parents  suppose  that  they  punish 
to  make  their  children  better,  although 
such  is  not  really  the  case.  They  do  it 
largely  to  save  themselves  vexation  and 
trouble,  if  indeed  there  is  not  present  an 
element  of  personal  retribution  and  ven- 
geance. But  all  conscientious  parents 
would  agree  that  whatever  their  purpose 
or  whatever  their  method,  they  should 
do  nothing  that  would  be  likely  to  hinder 
reformation.  Their  immediate  impulse 
might  be  to  make  the  child  less  objection- 
able, but  they  would  admit  that  in  doing 
this  they  ought  not  in  the  long  run  to 
make  him  more  so. 

This  brings  us  to  the  real  issue.  I  be- 
lieve that  in  a  vast  majority  of  cases  cor- 
poral punishment  does  hinder  reforma- 
tion.    It  may  cure  a  child  of  slamming 


ail  THE  CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

the  door,  of  invading  the  jam  pantry,  of 
soiling  his  rubbers,  of  mutilating  his 
books,  of  pinching  his  baby  sister,  or  of 
any  other  misdirected  energy.  It  may 
save  annoyance  and  vexation  of  spirit  to 
the  adult  house  in  the  immediate  present. 
But  it  has  not  raised  the  child's  moral 
standard,  nor  purified  his  intentions,  nor 
opened  his  vision  to  a  working  ideal. 
How  can  a  thrashing  help  the  discrimi- 
nation of  right  from  wrong? 

On  the  contrary,  it  has  set  a  seal  of  ap- 
proval on  the  method  of  the  brute ;  it  has 
driven  the  victim  to  think  more  of  his 
body  and  less  of  his  soul.  This  is 
the  tendency  of  corporal  punishment, 
whether  administered  in  school  or  in  the 
family  or  by  the  courts  of  the  State ;  and 
whether  it  be  in  the  form  of  old-fash- 
ioned tortures  or  simple  flogging. 

Just  for  a  moment  let  us  look  at  the 
other  side.  It  has  been  popularly  pre- 
sented over  and  over  again,  but  take  a 
few  sentences  from  a  public  teacher, 
whose  searching  insight,  lofty  motives, 


FAILURE  OF  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENT       213 

public  spirit,  and  incisive  pen  entitle 
whatever  he  says  to  consideration/ 
Listen: 

There  is  evident  just  at  the  present  time 
a  growing  belief  in  the  efficiency  of  the 
whipping-post  as  a  punishment  for  crim- 
inals. If  children  were  chastised  more, 
they  would  stand  less  in  need  of  it  after 
they  become  adults.  At  one  end  of  life 
or  the  other  we  all  need  to  be  whipped, 
and  by  one  kind  of  lash  or  another  are 
likely  to  be ;  and  one  stroke  while  we  are 
still  tender  is  worth  a  dozen  applied  after 
we  have  become  tough. 

This  tone  of  suggestion  is  not  motived 
by  any  sanguinary  desire  to  have  the  poor 
little  things  set  aching;  but  a  considerable 
percentage  of  the  elements  composing  our 
nature  is  as  definitely  brutal  as  anything 
that  appears  in  the  dog  or  the  ox,  and 
settled  brutality  can  be  matched  only  by 
more  of  the  same.  A  school-teacher  who 
is  forbidden  to  resort  to  corporal  punish- 
ment is  already  beaten  on  her  own 
ground.    It  may  not  be  safe  to  allow  her 

*  Dr.  Charles  H.  Parkhurst  in  The  Munseyy 
for  April,  1906. 


214  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

that  prerogative,  but  she  is  herself  de- 
feated if  it  is  not  allowed  to  her,  for  she 
is  almost  certain  to  have  pupils  into 
whom  respect  for  authority  can  only  be 
wrought  by  the  discipline  of  physical 
pain.  I  would  not  myself  teach  in  the 
average  run  of  common  school  where  a 
ferrule  is  not  recognised  as  an  essential 
piece  of  school-room  furniture.  If  it  is 
there,  it  may  not  be  needed;  if  it  is  not 
there,  it  will  almost  certainly  be  needed. 

This  is  dogmatic  enough  certainly, 
and  scarcely  less  plausible.  But  observe, 
it  has  no  word  of  constructive  justice.  It 
apparently  never  supposes  that  the  child 
may  be  so  guided  as  to  preclude  the 
necessity  of  retribution.  It  is  absolutely 
sweeping.  The  whole  emphasis  is  on  our 
duty  after  the  offence  is  committed,  in- 
stead of  on  our  duty  to  prevent  the  child 
from  becoming  an  offender  in  the  first 
instance. 

True,  it  might  be  urged  that  corporal 
punishment  was  the  particular  subject. 
But  it  is  not  safe  to  address  the  public  on 
the  subject  of  punishment  at  all  without 


FAILURE  OF  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENT      215 

showing  the  dangers  of  moral  damage 
through  Its  unjust  administration.  The 
fact  is  that  very  few  parents  or  teachers 
can  be  trusted  with  a  ferrule.  Very  little 
punishment  of  any  sort  is  strictly  fair, 
for  reasons  apparent  in  the  first  part  of 
this  book.  And,  for  reasons  to  appear 
presently,  corporal  punishment  is  almost 
sure  to  be  unfair,  to  say  nothing  of  de- 
moralising by  brutalising. 

If  children  were  chastised  more,  would 
adults  need  less  of  it?  Were  our  crim- 
inal classes  never  whipped?  Whipped 
children  curse  the  world.  Is  it  true  that 
the  brute  in  us  must  be  matched  by  the 
brutal  ?  or  ought  we  to  be  helped  to  rise 
above  our  bruteship?  If  the  school- 
teacher who  is  forbidden  to  whip  is  al- 
ready beaten  on  her  own  ground,  isn't 
her  ground  wrong?  Is  there  no  such 
thing  as  the  development  of  respect  for 
authority  without  the  agency  of  physical 
pain?  Corporal  punishment  may  deter 
from  committing  the  same  particular 
offence,  but  will  it  deter  from  other  of- 


21 6  THE    CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

fences  ?    Will  it  reform  the  moral  ideal  ? 
Will  it  help  the  discrimination  ?    Will  it 
strengthen  atrophied  moral  sense  ? 
Let  us  quote  again : 

When  the  matter  of  putting  the  rod 
back  in  the  New  York  public  schools 
was  up  for  discussion,  in  1904,  a  minor- 
ity report  favouring  such  step  urged — in 
the  language  used  conjointly  by  the 
Male  Principals'  Association  of  Man- 
hattan and  the  Bronx  and  the  Princi- 
pals' Association  of  the  city  of  New 
York — that  **every  child  has  the  right 
to  demand  of  us  that  we  train  him  to  a 
wholesome  respect  for  the  law."  Also 
that  **physical  pain  is  nature's  mode  of 
punishment,  and  it  is  unfair  to  state  that 
it  is  an  insult  to  the  child  whose  only 
avenue  of  sensibility  is  through  his  in- 
tegument." It  is  sentimentality  rather 
than  sentiment  that  antagonises  the  re- 
introduction  of  corporal  punishment  into 
the  schools — a  condition  of  mind  not 
likely  to  infect  the  judgment  of  teachers 
themselves,  who  come  face  to  face  with 
the  situation;  and  the  report  just  quoted 
concludes  by  saying  that  **out  of  two  hun- 
dred and  sixty-nine  principals,  corporal 


FAILURE  OF  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENT      217 

punishment  is  favoured  by  two  hundred 
and  twenty-three" — that  is,  by  more  than 
eighty-two  per  cent. 

The  fact  that  so  large  a  percentage  of 
principals  favoured  corporal  punishment 
is  significant — of  something.  But  of 
what?  Are  they  not  more  concerned 
with  the  child's  immediate  submission  to 
authority  than  with  his  development  into 
a  morally  self-governing  being?  The 
difference  is  wide.  Undoubtedly  the 
teachers  face  a  difficult  and  trying  situa- 
tion, and  the  temptation  to  coercion  by  the 
short  cut  way  is  very  great.  The  brutal- 
ising  way  is  often  the  royal  road  to  imme- 
diate results,  no  doubt.  But  justice 
demands  moral  development,  rather  than 
isolated  enforced  deeds.  Mechanical 
obedience,  we  have  seen  in  the  previous 
chapter,  is  not  loyalty.  The  child  has  a 
right  to  demand  that  we  **train  him  to  a 
wholesome  respect  for  the  law."  But 
brute  means  engender  no  such  educative 
respect,  even  though  they  terrorise  into 


siS  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

abject  submission  and  secure  certain  im- 
mediate results. 

So  much  for  the  argument  for  defence 
of  corporal  punishment.  The  principal 
reason  given  by  the  father  for  having 
whipped  his  child  is  that  the  offence  was 
never  committed  again — or  at  least  not 
soon  again.  But  this  view  is  too  limited. 
It  gives  no  indication  of  the  real  attitude 
of  the  victim's  mind  and  heart.  It  does 
not  show  that  the  terrorised  soul  has  be- 
come a  loyal  soul.  And  the  inference  is 
that  it  has  become  hardened  and  brutal- 
ised  rather  than  loyal  and  trustful. 

We  must,  then,  take  a  larger  view.  We 
must  look  for  effects  upon  both  pun- 
isher  and  punished — that  is,  for  results 
far  beyond  the  present  situation  of  par- 
ticular cases. 

As  a  general  proposition:  Corporal 
punishment  as  a  mode  of  moral  education 
is  a  failure. 

I.  As  a  method,  it  is  usually  irrational, 
since  it  bears  no  correlative  or  sequential 
relation  to  the   offence.     It  does   not, 


FAILURE  OF  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENT       219 

therefore,  educate  the  mind  either  of 
the  offender  or  of  the  punisher  or 
of  the  spectator.  Having  no  thought 
of  making  the  retribution  fit  the  deed, 
it  becomes  a  sort  of  universal  pre- 
scription, degrading  because  undiscrim- 
inating. 

2.  No  form  of  punishment  is  so  easy  to 
administer  suddenly,  excitedly,  without 
opportunity  for  fair  judgment  of  the 
case.  This  results  in  over-punishing 
and  the  moral  damage  wrought  by  has- 
tily assuming  too  much.  It  begets  the 
animus  that  might  (instead  of  justice) 
makes  right  and  induces  the  strong  to 
take  unfair  advantage  of  the  weak.  The 
punisher  imagines  himself  doing  right 
because  the  passionate  demonstration  re- 
lieves his  own  irritation  and  gives  an  out- 
let to  his  sense  of  vengeance.  This  self- 
indulgence  is  gratifying  to  his  animal 
nature,  and  the  gratification  seems  to  him 
like  the  approval  of  a  conscience  sensi- 
tive to  duty. 

3.  Fostering    the    idea    that    **might 


220  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

makes  right,**  corporal  punishment  be- 
comes a  self-perpetuating  institution, 
just  as  men  who  were  hazed  become 
hazers.  The  result  is  that  the  pug- 
nacious spirit  is  contagious.  Corporal 
punishment  is  a  species  of  battle;  and 
boys  fight  because  their  parents  sanction 
fighting  by  fighting  them.  This  stays  the 
progress  of  brotherhood  and  peace 
among  men. 

4.  Mere  bodily  power  or  gladiatorial 
skill  becomes  a  substitute  for  justice  and 
hence  a  menace  to  the  integrity  of  the 
whole  social  structure. 

5.  There  are  physiological  and  patho- 
logical reasons  against  corporal  punish- 
ment. Children  are  often  injured  for 
life  by  injudicious  penal  strokes.  Apart 
from  this,  a  better  result  is  to  be  ex- 
pected by  those  gentle  measures^  which 
tend  to  exert  a  calming,  quieting,  and 
soothing  influence  on  the  mind  as  a  means 
of  repressing  wrong  and  encouraging 
right  action,  than  measures  which  tend  to 

^  ** Gentle  Measures,"  by  Jacob  Abbott. 


FAILURE  OF  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENT       121 

agitate  and  irritate  the  mind.  Violent 
methods  tend  to  excite  angry  resentment 
and  this  does  not  make  for  loyalty  and 
trustful  devotion.  The  very  principle  of 
self-preservation  arouses  antagonism  and 
casts  suspicion  on  the  claim  that  the  lash 
is  intended  for  the  victim's  betterment. 
There  is  at  least  this  moral  peril  to  the 
developing  mind  if  there  be,  indeed,  no 
physical  injury. 

6.  No  argument  against  corporal  pun- 
ishment rests  upon  a  broader  base  and 
means  more  to  an  open  mind  perhaps 
than  the  historical.  It  is  not  my  purpose 
to  elaborate  this  here.  Suffice  it  to  indi- 
cate the  significant  truth  of  the  trend  of 
the  world's  movement. 

Thus,  we  find  a  rapidly  growing  ab- 
horrence of  war  and  of  the  apotheosis  of 
might.  Justice  is  pushing  its  claim  as 
the  only  arbiter  among  nations.  War  is 
declining  as  a  corrective  and  directive. 
We  have  peace  conferences  and  con- 
gresses and  arbitration  treaties.  Men 
are   addressing   themselves  less   to  the 


22a  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

sword  and  the  bullet  than  to  the  law  of 
unity  and  universal  brotherhood. 

See  how  many  classes  of  offences  in 
England  were  formerly  subject  to  capi- 
tal punishment.  Note  the  decline  of  bod- 
ily torture  as  a  means  of  making  men 
faithful  and  loyal.  It  is  little  more  than 
ten  years  since  flogging  was  abolished  in 
the  British  army.  Fifty  years  ago  every 
parish  in  England  had  its  stocks  in  use. 

Is  corporal  punishment  so  insisted  upon 
because  of  its  severity,  or  its  convenience, 
or  its  intelligible  appeal  ?  I  have  already 
shown  that  its  convenience  is  responsible 
for  much  hasty  and  unjust  administra- 
tion. As  to  severity,  it  is  said  that  crim- 
inals do  not  return  to  the  state  where  the 
whipping  post  is  their  dread.  Well, 
then,  are  they  reformed,  or  do  they  sim- 
ply cross  the  border  and  pursue  the  crim- 
inal life  elsewhere?  That  is  the  ques- 
tion. 

Nor  is  severity  a  guarantee  of  reforma- 
tion. Speaking  of  the  advantage  of  the 
'^indeterminate  sentence/'  an  expert  edi- 


FAILURE  OF  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENT       223 

tor^  thus  shows  up  the  popular  fallacy  of 
the  educating  power  of  mere  severity  in 
corporal  punishment : 

It  is  not  easy  always  to  measure  the  de- 
terrent force  of  laws;  we  can  tell  some- 
thing about  it  by  their  effect.  The  his- 
tory of  penology  shows  very  positively 
that  variations  in  the  force  of  penalties 
do  not  have  proportionate  effect  as  de- 
terrents. If  that  were  so  then  we  should 
expect  that  the  severest  penalty  would  be 
the  best  deterrent.  The  history  of  cen- 
turies refutes  the  supposition.  The 
application  of  the  most  terrible  physical 
punishments,  such  as  mutilation  and 
death,  did  not  prevent  petit  larceny.  In 
the  thirty-seven  years  of  the  reign  of 
Henry  VIII.  it  is  reported  that  37,000 
were  executed.  Even  as  late  as  18 18 
two  women  were  hung  in  England  for 
passing  forged  one-pound  notes.  But 
this  did  not  stop  forgery  or  larceny. 
These  punishments  were  discarded  not 
only  because  they  were  Inhuman,  but  be- 
cause they  were  Ineffectual. 

'  Charities  and   the   Commons^    December    29, 
1906. 


224  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

Charles  Dickens  drove  a  vast  deal  of 
corporal  punishment  from  the  schools  of 
England.  It  had  been  little  less  than 
barbaric  in  its  forms  and  in  its  frequency. 
He  saw  also  the  relation  between  a 
child's  food  and  his  conduct — that  a 
poorly  nourished  child  was  liable  to  pun- 
ishment arising  from  his  anemia  and 
that  nourishment  was  often  a  better  cure 
for  delinquency  than  punishment  could 
be.  "No  other  writer,"  says  Inspector 
James  L.  Hughes,^  '*has  attacked  so 
many  phases  of  wrong  training,  unjust 
treatment,  and  ill  usage  of  childhood.'' 
His  books  describe  no  less  than  twenty- 
eight  schools.  He  abated  not  only  actual 
corporal  cruelty,  but  also  the  terrorising 
of  children. 

Dickens  was  the  prophet  of  a  reform, 
noting  which,  our  former  Commissioner 
of  Education,  Dr.  William  T.  Harris, 
says:  **The  habit  of  finding  in  the  good 
tendencies  of  the  child  the  levers  with 

'  **Dickens  as  an  Educator,"  by  James  L.  Hughes. 


FAILURE  OF  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENT       225 

which  to  move  him  to  the  repression  of 
his  bad  impulses  has  placed  in  the  hands 
of  the  professional  teacher  the  means  of 
governing  the  child  without  appeal  to 
force  except  in  the  rarest  cases." 

Of  the  work  which  the  juvenile  court 
and  its  accessory,  the  probation  officer, 
are  doing  toward  the  abolition  of  irra- 
tional and  undeserved  punishment — 
even  of  lawbreakers  I  have  already 
spoken.  But  this  mighty  reform  is  all  in 
the  world  trend  which  makes  for  a  truer 
human  brotherhood. 

Once  more,  the  insane  are  no  longer 
outcasts  or  criminals,  but  sufferers  from 
disease.  Houses  of  incarceration  and 
detention  have  become  hospitals ;  guards 
have  become  attendants  and  nurses. 
Irons  and  straight  jackets,  once  among 
the  corporal  inflictions,  have  been  put 
into  the  museum  to  be  studied  historically 
or  gazed  on  with  horror.  All  this  is  in- 
dicative of  the  way  the  world  is  moving 
— toward  more  rational,  more  fitting, 
more  adjustable,  more  efficacious,  more 


226  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

educative,  more  humane  ways  of  punish- 
ment and  reform. 

7.  Further.  The  trend  is  toward  pre- 
vention as  better  than  cure.  The  more  a 
parent  thinks  about  punishment  of  any 
kind,  the  more  he  will  punish — and 
punish  unfittingly  and  unjustly.  And  the 
more  he  punishes,  the  more  is  he  likely  to 
resort  to  the  corporal  method.  It  makes 
him  feel  that  he  is  doing  something, 
gives  him  a  sense  of  his  own  prowess, 
swells  his  head  and  contracts  his  heart. 
The  only  person  I  can  think  of  as  pos- 
sibly deserving  a  flogging  is  the  flogging 
parent  or  caretaker.  The  flogger  brutal- 
ises  himself  as  well  as  the  child  he  flogs, 
and  this  results  in  brutalising,  and  so 
lowering,  the  moral  tone  of  society,  and 
perpetuating  the  practice  to  coming  gen- 
erations. 

Justice  waits  not  until  the  evil  deed  is 
done,  so  that  punishment  may  be  in- 
flicted, but  so  fairly  deals  with  the  indi- 
vidual that  he  shall  not  be  tempted  to 
become  an  evil  doer.    Justice  labours  to 


FAILURE  OF  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENT       227 

enable  each  individual  to  realise  his  full- 
est capacity  for  contributing  to  the  uni- 
versal good.  This  is  morality.  Toward 
such  an  end  corporal  punishment  is  a 
failure  and  Its  tendency  is  therefore  im- 
moral. 


X 

MONEY  AS  A  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING 

As  a  means  of  training  the  mind  and  the 
.  hands  to  moral  uses,  no  other  agency  is 
SO  resourceful  as  money.  It  is  the  com- 
monest and  most  familiar  representative 
of  value  all  through  life,  and  as  such  it 
IS  a  symbol  of  the  property  sense — in 
which  the  sentiment  of  justice  origi- 
nates. 

The  fact  that  the  love  of  money  for  its 
own  sake  is  the  root  of  all,  or  of  much, 
evil,  coupled  with  the  fact  that  we  can- 
not get  along  without  it,  gives  it  a  high 
practice  value  in  moral  training.  But 
this  also  suggests  another  fact — that  it 
IS  easy  to  misuse  it  in  seeking  this  very 
end. 

There  are  many  persons  whose  minds 
are  more  honest  than  their  hands.    Small 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING     229 

peculations  frequently  arise  from  the 
fact  that  the  hands  have  not  been  trained 
to  hold  other  people's  money.  Of  course 
a  thoroughly  established  just  habit  of 
mind  will  control  the  hands,  but  not  many 
persons  have  attained  to  such  a  fixed 
habit  of  mind.  So  they  peculate,  or  are 
at  least  loose  and  careless  in  handling 
other  people's  money  without  classing 
themselves  as  dishonest  or  criminal.  This 
has  been  demonstrated  by  experiment 
with  groups  of  men  of  equal  morality, 
but  who  have  and  have  not  been  trained 
to  handle  other  people's  property. 

On  the  other  hand,  many  a  one  is  trusty 
with  funds  who  really  has  no  higher  gen- 
eral religious  and  moral  standards,  yet 
whose  money  handling  is  honest  largely 
because  of  long  training  in  it.  The  feel 
of  trust  money  awakens  no  personal 
cupidity  or  begets  no  carelessness.  Scru- 
pulosity has  become  a  habit. 

It  is  apparent,  then,  that  any  thought 
of  money  as  a  training  instrument  must 
take  cognisance  of  two  aspects  of  the  sub- 


ago  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

ject — our  own  money  and  other  people's 
money. 

Children,  especially  as  they  approach  or 
are  entering  adolescence,  should  be  en- 
trusted with  small  funds  not  their  own. 
It  is  evident  that  this  has  a  larger  train- 
ing value  than  that  of  simple  honesty.  It 
begets  not  only  moral  trustworthiness, 
but  general  executive  or  administrative 
reliability;  it  demands  thoughtful  care, 
self-inspection,  self-control,  order,  cour- 
age, exactness  and  even,  as  a  side  result, 
punctuality. 

There  are  various  ways  of  thus  entrust- 
ing children  with  money,  such  as  errands, 
treasurerships,  the  payment  of  bills,  and 
the  temporary  custody  of  small  sums  for 
apparent  purposes.  It  will  be  seen  that 
the  critical  faculty,  the  judgment,  as  well 
as  the  emotions  and  the  will,  can  all  be 
brought  into  healthy  exercise  in  this  mat- 
ter. Trustworthiness  is  begotten  by  be- 
ing trusted,  and  the  moral  backbone  of 
many  a  child  is  stiffened  by  seeing  that 
he  is  trusted.    Similarly,  rogues  are  not 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      231 

infrequently  the  creatures  of  our  distrust, 
for  children  and  men  are  likely  to  grow 
to  what  we  repute  them  to  be.  Money  is 
an  easy  and  effective  agency  in  this  fea- 
ture of  character-building. 

Much  more  might  be  said  about  the  just 
handling  of  other  people's  money,  but 
this  chapter  means  to  be  little  more  than 
suggestive  of  principles,  and  much  that 
is  involved  in  stewardship  or  trusteeship 
is  essential  also  to  the  discussion  of  the 
children's  money  as  their  own. 

The  subject  divides  naturally  under 
four  heads:  (i)  Earning;  (2)  Saving; 
(3)  Spending;  (4)  Giving.  Or  we  may 
use  the  four  little  verbs,  get,  keep,  use, 
give.  While  lending  and  borrowing  are 
a  very  important  part  of  the  world's  busi- 
ness life,  great  care  is  necessary  in  guid- 
ing children  in  this  class  of  transactions. 
Many  schoolboys  and  girls  fall  only  too 
easily  into  the  habit  of  borrowing.  In  al- 
most any  class  one  is  pretty  sure  to  see 
the  borrowing  pupil,  who,  to  avoid  the 
trouble  of  carrying  his  own  books  or 


23*  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

Other  school  utensils,  depends  upon  the 
easy  lender  to  help  him  through.  Here 
is  a  violation  of  the  law  of  common  fair- 
ness in  a  very  contemptible  form  when 
it  becomes  a  fixed  habit. 

The  parent  must  use  a  fine  discrimina- 
tion here.  The  child  should  be  cautioned 
against  dependence  on  borrowing,  even 
though  in  emergency  it  is  the  right  thing 
to  do.  On  the  other  hand,  he  should  be 
trained  to  discriminate  between  that 
habitual  lending  which  encourages  habit- 
ual borrowing  and  that  occasional  lend- 
ing which  is  right  and  proper.  Justice  is 
the  arbiter  just  here.  The  ultimate  aim 
is  a  true  cooperative  spirit,  a  unified  pur- 
pose, a  community  of  interests.  The  boy 
who  relies  on  borrowing,  expecting  his 
good-natured  mate  to  do  his  carrying,  is 
anti-social,  unjust,  and  immoral.  So, 
too,  is  the  boy  who  makes  it  a  rule  never 
either  to  lend  or  to  borrow.  As  children 
grow  in  their  **teens,"  they  will  gradually 
come  to  see  the  use  and  abuse  of  borrow- 
ing in  business  life.     As  a  general  rule 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      233 

the  hand-to-mouth  borrower  is  to  be 
shunned  for  his  own  sake  as  well  as  for 
that  of  the  might-be-lender. 

I.  As  to  earning.  It  has  been  a  much 
discussed  point  as  to  whether  children 
should  be  encouraged  to  earn  their  own 
money  or  whether  they  should  have  an 
allowance,  or  both.  The  question  cannot 
be  answered  by  an  unvarying  rule.  But 
this  IS  sure ;  when  parents  pay  their  chil- 
dren for  service,  it  should  be  the  kind  of 
service  which  is  not  strictly  a  child's 
home  duty  simply  as  the  child  of  his 
parents.  Many  little  services  must  be 
rendered  for  love's  sake,  lest  a  sordid 
spirit  arise. 

I  knew  of  a  father  who  had  a  "den"  or 
shop,  where  he  recreated  himself  with 
carpentry  or  other  mechanical  work.  He 
paid  his  little  children  three  cents  a  week 
to  keep  the  shop  in  order.  As  they  grew 
older,  he  raised  the  wage  to  five,  then  to 
ten,  then  twenty-five  cents,  and  ulti- 
mately a  dollar.  But  the  shop  cleaning 
in  time  fell  into  irregularity  and  neglect, 


234  THE    CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

even  though  the  reward  grew  as  an  in- 
creasing allowance. 

When  children  are  paid  for  service,  the 
service  should  be  strictly  rendered.  There 
should  also  be  conditions  in  the  contract, 
if  possible,  as  an  educative  feature. 

One  of  the  best  educative  plans  for  aid- 
ing a  child  to  earn  money  intelligently 
and  at  the  same  time  begetting  a  method- 
ical business  habit  was  one  devised  by  a 
father  for  a  girl  of  thirteen.  The  child 
was  to  be  given  certain  kinds  of  bills 
to  pay,  and  to  receive  a  commission 
therefor.  One  advantage  of  this  plan 
was  that  it  taught  her  to  handle  other 
people's  money,  even  to  carrying  it  about 
the  city,  and  at  the  same  time  gave  her 
a  chance  to  earn  her  own  income. 

The  arrangement  was  that  **downtown" 
bills — that  is,  bills  to  be  paid  at  business 
houses  in  the  centre  of  the  city,  say  two 
miles  distant  from  home — ^were  to  be 
graded  thus :  Bills  up  to  five  dollars,  five 
per  cent,  commission;  bills  of  five  to  ten 
dollars,  two  per  cent. ;  ten  to  twenty-five, 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      235 

one  per  cent. ;  over  twenty-five,  one-half 
per  cent.  Bills  In  the  home  district  up 
to  twenty  dollars,  one  per  cent.  Ser- 
vants' wages,  one-half  per  cent.  If  the 
latter  were  neglected  until  over  two  days 
overdue,  there  was  no  commission.  An 
error  In  calculating  the  percentage  In  any 
case  reduced  the  commission  one-half. 
When  the  child  Increased  in  years  the 
rate  of  commission  was  increased.  The 
girl  kept  her  account,  which  was  settled 
monthly,  she  signing  the  book  at  the 
foot  of  each  page. 

It  will  be  seen  that  this  arrangement 
naturally  led  to  inquiry:  "Why  Is  my 
percentage  less  as  the  amount  of  the  bill 
increases?"  Because  it  takes  just  as 
much  time  and  costs  as  much  walking  or 
carfare  to  pay  five  dollars  as  ten.  A  com- 
mission of  five  per  cent,  on  fifty  dollars 
would  be  a  little  heavy  on  the  father. 
For  a  bill  of  this  size  one-quarter  per 
cent,  might  be  enough  on  the  foregoing 
basis,  but  when  It  is  considered  that  the 
child's  responsibility  in  carrying  so  much 


236  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

money  was  so  much  greater,  It  was  fair 
to  remunerate  her  In  a  measure  for  the 
care  necessary  to  Its  safety. 

The  principles  Involved  In  the  foregoing 
scheme  are  ( i )  easy  quantitative 
measurements;  (2)  grading  to  teach 
relative  conditions  of  valuation;  (3)  pen- 
alty of  neglect  or  error;  (4)  as  the  child 
grows  Into  conventional  ways  and  ap- 
preciation, the  scale  of  commissions 
changes.  Or,  to  put  It  more  succinctly, 
the  percentage  Is  adjusted  by  the  amount, 
distance,  responsibility,  punctuality,  sac- 
rifice and  accuracy.  Here  Is  a  large  edu- 
cational value. 

If  children  aid  their  father  In  his  busi- 
ness, they  should  usually  be  paid  for  It. 
If  they  address  or  deliver  circulars,  do 
boxing,  labelling,  copying,  bookkeeping, 
dusting,  or  anything  that  Is  commercial, 
It  should  be  regarded  commercially.  Es- 
pecially Is  this  true  If  the  service  Is  reg- 
ular and  by  agreement  rather  than  the 
mere  lending  of  hand  to  help  a  father 
because  he  Is  a  father. 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING     237 

I  take  the  liberty  now  of  quoting  at 
some  length  from  a  valuable  article  on 
**Child-training  by  Bookkeeping,"  by 
Mrs.  Jane  Marsh  Parker.^  It  is  very 
complete  in  its  way  and  is  worthy  of 
study,  although  I  should  prefer  to  see  it 
modified  when  applied  to  a  boy  only  six 
years  of  age.  Mrs.  Parker  says: 

I  found  the  other  day  in  a  collection 
of  old  papers  the  account-book  opened 
with  my  eldest  son  when,  upon  his  sixth 
birthday,  an  allowance  of  twenty-five 
cents  a  week  was  given  him.  Out  of 
that  he  was  to  give  to  the  Sunday-school 
five  cents  weekly.  He  was  to  use  his 
own  judgment  in  spending  his  money; 
but  he  was  to  give  an  account  for  every 
penny  on  Saturday  night,  when  his  father 
went  over  the  account  with  him,  and 
settled  it  for  the  week.  A  schedule  of 
charges  for  misdemeanors  was  fixed  upon 
at  the  outset;  the  child  decided  what 
they  should  be,  and  signed  a  contract  to 
pay  the  same  cheerfully  when  required. 
He  was  to  be  paid  extra  for  doing  certain 
things,  like  shovelling  snow,  weeding  the 

*  The  Outlook.  August  II,  1906. 


23^  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

garden,  etc.  Added  to  this,  an  account 
was  kept  of  gifts  of  money;  making  all  in 
all  quite  a  bit  of  bookkeeping,  demanding 
regularity  and  accuracy  of  entries.  That 
account-book,  with  pencil  attached,  was 
kept  within  easy  reach.  Alas  that  It  was 
often  the  source  of  tears!  Here  are  a 
few  items  on  the  debit  side  : 

Losing  my  hat 03 

Spilling  ink  on  baby 05 

Skipping  bath 05 

Saucy  to  cook 03 

Muddy  shoes  in  house.  .    .03 

His  [father's]  bookkeeping  system  for 
children  permitted  advance  loans — ad^ 
vised  them  when  needed — but  a  debt  was 
to  be  paid  as  soon  as  possible.  Pleasur- 
ing and  goodies  were  not  to  be  invested 
in  with  a  debt  on  one's  shoulders.  There 
was  always  honest  work  for  boys  to  do 
whose  allowance  was  not  equal  to  pay- 
ing debts. 

At  one  time  it  looked  not  a  little  as  if 
we  were  cultivating  what  might  turn  out 
to  be  stinginess  in  the  boy,  so  severely 
frugal  did  he  wax  under  pressure  of  in- 
solvency. That  was  the  chance  for 
teaching  discretion  in  giving — for  mak- 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING     239 

Ing  lasting  impression  of  what  avarice 
can  do  in  transforming  character — as 
there  happened  to  be  one  or  two  striking 
demonstrations  available  for  illustration, 
and  the  most  was  made  of  them. 

A  wholesale  dread  of  bankruptcy,  of 
having  to  draw  on  his  bank  account 
rather  than  add  to  it  another  five  dollars, 
is  the  best  kind  of  a  curb-bit  on  an  im- 
pulsive, wide-awake  boy.  ...  A  spend- 
thrift child  is  not  easily  taught  frugality, 
and  if  strict  accounting  for  an  allowance 
will  not  do  it,  his  is  a  hopeless  case  in- 
deed. .  .  .  The  weekly  balancing  of  that 
account  by  parent  and  child  becomes  an 
important  feature  of  the  family  life,  pro- 
moting that  community  of  interests  with- 
out which  disintegration  of  the  home  is 
sure  to  follow. 

The  spirit  of  this  method  is  very  fine. 
In  some  particulars,  however,  I  should 
doubt  the  expediency,  especially  in  the 
average  household.  Here  are  evidently 
exceptional  parents  in  more  ways  than 
one.  For  a  child  of  double  their  child's 
age,  and  more,  the  plan  would  seem  to 
me  in  all  details  more  applicable.     Mrs, 


24©  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

Theodore  Birney  also  advocates  strict 
accountancy  and  balances.  But  we  may 
be  too  exact  with  children  of  six  or 
eight  A  certain  amount  of  unaccount- 
ability  goes  with  young  childhood.  The 
kindergarten  age  is  not  the  age  for 
mathematical  precision.  Balances  are  too 
intellectual.  But  the  ideal  of  promoting 
community  of  interests  is  a  kindergarten 
Ideal,  and  the  spirit  of  this  arrangement 
Is  true  and  good. 

It  is  possible,  too,  to  attempt  to  fix 
money  values  to  childish  acts  with  too 
much  precision.  Money  may  become  too 
prevailing  and  too  exacting  a  thought  in 
the  child's  life.  The  danger  of  stinginess 
referred  to  by  the  writer  was  met  by 
wholesome  teaching,  but  not  every  parent 
Is  so  discerning  as  this. 

Once  more,  it  were  better  that  so  young 
a  child  should  not  sign  a  contract.  He 
must  be  made  trusty  by  trusting  him  Im- 
plicitly. Contracts  are  for  men  In  the 
complex  relations  of  business  life.  Better 
begin  life  with  an  emphasis  on  the  simple 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING     241 

Strength  of  yea,  yea;  nay,  nay.  By  all 
means  omit  the  written  contract  with  so 
young  a  child  unless  merely  as  a  mem- 
orandum. 

The  climax  of  cleverness  in  this  matter 
of  training  young  children  is  reached  in 
Carl  Ewald's  masterly  sketch,  *'My 
Little  Boy.''^  The  child  was  given  a 
penny  a  week,  with  the  privilege  of  dis- 
posing of  it  as  he  pleased.  The  arrange- 
ment was  to  last  until  the  summer  holi- 
days, a  period  of  fifteen  weeks. 

Accordingly,  his  father  divided  a 
drawer  into  fifteen  compartments,  and  in 
each  compartment  he  put  a  penny.  This 
gave  the  child  a  survey,  at  any  moment, 
of  his  resources.  The  spectacle  of  fifteen 
shining  coins  fills  him  with  mad  delight, 
and  he  begins  the  week  with  the  pur- 
chase of  a  stick  of  chocolate,  which  dis- 
appears in  five  minutes. 

The  father  tells  him  about  a  top  that 
he   might   have   bought.     After   much 

*  The   Strand  Magazine ^  June,  1 906. 


*4a  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

tribulation  the  top  is  bought  the  follow- 
ing week,  and  in  three  days  is  lost.  Then 
a  skipping  rope  is  wanted,  but  it  costs 
fourpence.  The  paternal  advice  is  to  buy 
nothing  the  next  three  weeks,  and  then 
on  the  fourth  there  will  be  the  fourpence 
in  hand. 

The  boy,  however,  has  had  youthful 
counsel,  and  he  proposes  that  his  father 
lend  him  the  fourpence,  for  which  he  will 
give  twenty  pennies  back.  The  father 
refuses,  showing  the  child  that  he  has 
only  thirteen  pennies  at  best. 

They  go  and  study  the  aspect  of  the 
drawer — the  boy  in  dismay.  The  father 
next  proposes  that  he  take  the  boy's 
penny  and  advance  him  four,  noting  that 
the  three  succeeding  weeks  the  pennies 
in  the  drawer  will  come  due  to  the  father. 
This  is  accepted  and  the  debt  liquidated 
in  instalments  each  week. 

On  the  second  week  the  boy  wants  a 
stick  of  chocolate,  but  is  told  that  he  must 
wait  until  the  debt  is  paid.  The  boy  sees 
that  what's  gone  is  gone.     The  novelty 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      243 

of  the  rope  has  worn  off.  The  boy  pro- 
poses to  draw  on  a  compartment  beyond 
the  appropriated  funds,  and  takes  the 
penny  farthest  off — just  before  the  holi- 
days. Thus  begins  a  species  of  pecula- 
tion, which  is  continued  until  all  is  gone 
and  there  are  five  empty  compartments 
between  him  and  the  summer  holidays. 
This  is  poverty,  and  father  and  child  sit 
every  day  contemplating  the  empty 
drawer.  The  experience  is  painful,  but  it 
Is  hoped  will  prove  profitable  when  the 
new  set  of  pennies  is  started  after  the 
holidays. 

Nothing  could  exceed  this  as  a  practical 
training  in  the  morals  of  finance.  The 
whole  philosophy  is  visible  at  any  time 
in  hard  pan.  It  looks,  too,  as  though 
it  were  better  that  the  boy  had  not 
earned  the  money,  since  under  the 
arrangement  the  expenditure  could  be 
prescribed. 

Of  course  this  scheme  has  no  direct 
thought  of  saving  or  giving,  and  is  there- 
fore limited.    But  as  a  discipline  its  reach 


244  THE  CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

is  farther  than  might  at  first  appear.  It 
exposed  the  child  to  a  temptation  the  in- 
sidious nature  of  which  he  could  soon  see 
for  himself.  To  an  extent,  it  indirectly 
suggested  the  need  of  saving  by  not  ap- 
propriating money  better  kept  in  hand 
for  future  need.  As  the  plan  exposed  the 
boy  to  temptation,  so  it  gave  him  oppor- 
tunity to  study  relative  values,  prospec- 
tive needs,  and  methods  of  adjustment. 
The  child  and  the  father  together  could 
ponder  and  devise  and  enjoy  and  suffer. 
In  that  drawer  a  lifetime  was  compressed 
and  illustrated  with  simplicity  and  sug- 
gestiveness. 

Under  this  general  head  of  earning  or 
getting  we  must  not  neglect  a  side  thrust 
at  the  most  insidious  cause  of  moral  de- 
generacy to  which  we  are  liable.  I  mean 
the  growing  vice  of  gambling — the  aim 
to  get  something  for  nothing.  Money 
won  by  betting,  by  lottery,  or  by  any 
other  form  of  chancing  is  not  earned. 
No  return  is  made  for  it.  The  gambler 
is  not  a  producer,  not  a  factor  in  legiti- 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      245 

mate  trade,  not  a  giver  of  value  for 
value. 

Very  early  should  the  child  be  taught 
the  dangers  of  the  hope  to  get  something 
for  nothing.  Not  only  ethical  principle 
but  the  civil  law  condemns  under  the  class 
name  of  gambling  this  chief  among  social 
vices. 

All  my  life  I  have  been  an  abstainer 
and  I  yield  to  none  in  the  wish  to  see 
King  Alcohol  dethroned  forever.  But 
his  extinction  will  not  remove  his  coad- 
jutor, the  gambling  spirit,  from  power. 
The  two  often  cooperate,  but  not  neces- 
sarily always.  The  motive  of  something- 
for-nothing  begins  long  before  liquor  is 
tasted  and  in  places  where  alcohol  is  un- 
known. 

Of  the  two  I  believe  It  to  be  the  more 
insidious  and  surreptitious.  To  the  com- 
mon eye  it  is  much  more  evident  where 
the  first  glass  may  lead  to  than  where 
the  first  "chance"  or  **bet"  may  lead  to. 
The  first  drunk  Is  an  alarming  warning; 
the  first  stake,  either  lost  or  won,  is  an 


246  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

invitation  to  continue,  with  no  red  signal 
of  the  tightening  grip  of  habit. 

In  England,  justices,  magistrates,  and 
moralists  are  growing  alarmed  at  the 
mad  spreading  of  the  betting  and  gaming 
habit.  The  temperance  cause  is  gaining 
ground,  but  the  gambling  spirit  is  ram- 
pant— **bridge"  being  among  the  leading 
incitements,  although  by  no  means  the 
only  one. 

That  betting  or  gambling  has  become 
as  prevalent  here  as  in  England  may  be 
a  question,  but  that  it  is  rapidly  sapping 
the  moral  sense  in  all  grades  of  society 
is  beyond  doubt.  If  it  has  not  yet  reached 
the  point  of  a  national  evil  here,  now  is 
the  time  to  prevent  it.  And  home  teach- 
ing is  the  first  teaching.  A  gambling 
home  is  far  worse  than  a  gambling 
saloon,  since  the  home  is  the  first  place  of 
sanction  or  of  condemnation  in  the  moral 
life. 

Briefly,  gambling  is  defined  as  "the  de- 
termination of  the  ownership  of  property 
by  appeal  to  chance."^     By  chance  we 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      247 

mean  those  natural  forces  or  conditions 
or  mutations  that  cannot  be  controlled. 
All  gain  by  gambling  is  unjust,  but  not 
all  unjust  gain  is  gambling. 

Many  persons  are  brought  up  to  abhor 
this  seductive  vice  of  gambling,  yet  they 
lack  just  that  ethical  discrimination  for 
the  culture  of  which  this  volume  pleads, 
and  so  they  do  not  perceive  wherein  the 
evil  really  lies.  The  result  is  that  they 
sometimes  condemn  the  legitimate  and 
sometimes  condone  immoral  proceedings, 
and  are  unable  in  either  case  to  account 
to  inquiring  children  for  their  judgments. 

In  a  succinct  way,  then,  let  us  see  what 
the  sin  of  gambling  consists  in — viewing 
its  tendencies  and  the  demoralisation  that 
follows  in  its  train.^ 

It  involves  the  denial  of  system  and  of 
rational  control  and  social  order  in  the 
apportionment  of  property.  It  is  an  or- 
ganised rejection  alike  of  reason  and  of 

*  John  A.  Hobson  in  **Betting  and  Gambling  a 
National  Evil,"  edited  by  B.  Seebohm  Rowntree. 
(Macmillan). 


24S  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

industry.  It  plunges  the  mind  into  a 
world  of  anarchy,  where  things  come  and 
go  without  human  regulation  or  control. 
It  thus  inflicts  a  graver  damage  on  the 
intellect  than  theft,  for,  rejecting  reason, 
it  puts  its  devotees  in  an  atmosphere  of 
chance  and  generates  an  emotional  excite- 
ment that  tends  to  inhibit  those  checks 
which  reason  puts  upon  emotional  ex- 
travagance. Rational  control  is  a  neces- 
sary factor  of  civilisation.  It  means  plan 
in  life,  order  in  society,  progress  in  hu- 
manity. To  all  this  gambling  is  a  blow, 
which  sends  the  human  mind  reeling  to 
a  less  human  plane  of  living.  It  is  easy 
to  become  a  gambler,  especially  in  some 
stations  of  life  void  of  variety  and  recre- 
ation. 

Monotony  begets  the  gambling  spirit. 
There  is  fascination  in  the  unexpected 
and  in  the  hazardous,  and  men  will  seek 
it  as  a  relief  from  monotony  and  the 
humdrum  of  existence. 

All  this  means  a  "descent  to  a  lower 
plane  of  thought  and  feeling.''     "Per- 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING     249 

haps  no  other  human  interest,''  says  Mr. 
John  A.  Hobson,  "not  based  on  purely 
physical  craving,  arouses  so  absorbing  a 
passion ;  alcoholism  itself  scarcely  asserts 
a  stronger  dominion  over  its  devotees." 
The  uncertainty,  the  hazard,  the  possi- 
bility, the  feverish  awaiting,  all  lay  a 
deadly  grip  on  the  moral  sense.  Sym- 
pathies for  others  in  their  losses  are  ex- 
tinguished. Misfortune  is  rated  a  part 
of  the  game  of  life.  The  opium  habit  is 
hardly  more  insidious  and  irresistible. 
Says  Mr.  W.  D.  Mackenzie,  "In  the 
making  of  a  bet,  a  man  resolves  to  re- 
press the  use  of  his  reason,  his  will,  his 
conscience,  his  affections;  only  one  part 
of  his  nature  is  allowed  free  play  and 
that  is  his  emotions."  He  lives  in 
an  unnatural  strain,  a  stranger  to  pru- 
dence and  industry. 

Lying,  fraud,  theft,  personal  antago- 
nisms, and  self-destruction  follow  in  the 
wake  of  gambling.  Many  embezzle- 
ments are  the  result  of  It.  The  family 
as  well  as  the  individual  is  wrecked  by 


%So  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

it.  It  becomes  an  infectious  social  dis- 
ease with  all  attendant  evils.  Slow  and 
legitimate  accumulation  is  not  suffered, 
healthy  activity  is  paralysed  and  govern- 
ment itself  is  threatened  with  a  rotten  de- 
terioration. 

Is  it  possible  that  such  a  horrid  picture 
comes  back  in  any  sense  to  our  Christian 
homes?  To  a  large  extent,  yes.  The 
principle  of  *4east  effort,''  indolence, 
or  laziness;  the  excitement  and  fascina- 
tion of  hazard  and  irresponsible  chance, 
these  make  the  way  easy  for  the  motive 
of  something-for-nothing.  This  motive 
itself  is  invited  and  stimulated  in  many 
ways  and  through  various  agencies. 
Most  of  these  may  not  be  wrong  or  evil 
in  themselves,  but  they  conspire  to  the  in- 
trusion of  the  gambling  spirit. 

First  among  these  conspirators  is  lan- 
guage itself.  The  free  use  of  such  words 
as  **luck''  and  *'bet"  tends  to  level  the 
thought  to  the  thing  signified  in  the 
speech.  Then  comes  the  passion  for 
special  privilege,  and  the  **parasitic  feel- 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      251 

ing."  Next  the  more  specific  induce- 
ments to  get  something  for  nothing  in  the 
shape  of  a  **prize  with  every  package," 
free  gifts  with  no  visible  string  to  them, 
prizes  for  game  winning,  a  free  piano, 
prize  guessing,  etc.  It  is  not  contended 
that  these  are  gambling,  but  only  that 
they  conspire  to  inflame  the  motive  of 
something-for-nothing,  of  which  gam- 
bling is  the  ultimate  evil.  Three  times 
in  a  few  months  have  I  had  very  tempt- 
ing offers  of  free  gifts  from  publishers. 
The  first  two  I  accepted,  with  the  result 
that  I  was  afterward  pestered  to  sub- 
scribe to  books.  The  third  I  resolutely 
ignored,  on  the  principle  that  something 
for  nothing  never  pays. 

Again  come  the  more  directly  evil  in- 
ducements to  bet,  often  in  fun,  more  of- 
ten in  earnest.  The  popular  '^bridge"  is 
begetting  hosts  of  ^^respectable"  betting 
people,  and  money  passes  freely  in  homes 
and  In  clubs.  To  this  must  be  added 
the  raffle  and  the  organised  lottery. 
Travellers    abroad    fall    into    gambling 


252  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

snares  **just  to  try  it."  A  lady  told  me 
that  she  always  charged  her  gaming 
losses  at  Monte  Carlo  to  travelling  ex- 
penses. She  said  she  knew  it  was  gam- 
bling and  would  not  dare  to  do  it  at 
home. 

The  home  attitude  toward  all  these  con- 
spiring agencies  influences  the  children. 
An  atmosphere  free  from  these  taints 
makes  them  repugnant  when  they  are 
met  with  outside.  A  pronounced  an- 
athema against  the  shiftless  greed  that  is 
always  looking  for  something  without 
giving  return  will  prove  a  wholesale 
preventive.  When  our  common  law 
declares  certain  things  to  be  immoral  and 
destructive,  the  weak-kneed  Christian 
may  invoke  it  as  his  reason  for  refusing 
to  participate  in  bets,  raffles,  lotteries, 
or  other  forms  of  gaming  mechanism 
no  matter  where  or  in  what  interest  they 
are  held. 

If  this  attitude  toward  this  in'dolent  and 
unfair  something-for-nothing  spirit  can 
be  made  pronouncedly  antagonistic  in  the 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      253 

home,  the  whole  moral  life  of  the  chil- 
dren will  be  better  insured  than  if  there 
is  simply  a  limp,  goody-goody  talk,  punc- 
tuated with  **luck,"  prize  packages, 
special  privileges,  **bridge"  ball-game 
and  election  bets,  and  raffles — all  of 
which  are  unequitable  and  anti-social. 

Bishop  Brent  of  the  Philippine  Islands 
in  an  article  in  the  Manila  Times  thus 
reiterates  the  substance  of  a  sermon  of 
his  which  created  a  hostile  sensation  -} 

My  assertion  is  that  moderate  gam- 
bling is  a  vice,  and  it  is  as  respectable  to 
be  a  moderate  liar,  a  moderate  adulterer, 
a  moderate  thief,  as  to  be  a  moderate 
gambler.  The  effect  on  the  character,  if 
not  equal,  is  at  any  rate  similar.  .  .  . 
I  reassert  that  gambling  is  contemptible 
in  any  one  who  pretends  to  self-respect, 
and  reprehensible  to  God  and  His  Son 
Jesus  Christ.  I  maintain  that  the  differ- 
ence between  poker  and  cock-fighting, 
between  bridge  whist  played  for  money 
and  pangingue,  is  a  matter  of  white- 
wash. .   .   .  Poker  I  think  is  a  contempt- 

*  Quoted  from  The  Outlook^  Sept.  8,  1906. 


254  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

ible  game;  if  it  were  not  for  the  money 
risked,  poker  would  drop  out  of  exist- 
ence. Whist  is  entirely  different;  it  is  a 
good  game,  a  game  of  the  intellect  and 
a  game  of  skill,  and  I  commend  it;  but 
I  maintain  that  when  bridge  whist  is 
played  for  money  or  for  expensive  prizes 
as  distinguished  from  a  trophy  held,  but 
never  owned,  by  a  winner,  as  it  is  in 
Manila,  it  isn't  a  bit  different  from  the 
cock-pit  or  from  the  roulette-table  at 
Monte  Carlo.  The  only  distinction  is 
that  the  thing  called  ^society'  has  dipped 
its  brush  in  whitewash  and  has  white- 
washed bridge  whist  played  for  money. 

2.  As  to  Saving.  Justice  is  essentially 
economic.  It  means  that  every  one  shall 
have  his  due.  Therefore,  a  child  or 
youth  who  has  had  no  training  in  the 
economics  of  life  is  likely  to  be  robbed 
of  his  best  resources  sooner  or  later.  He 
will  be  his  own  robber.  Economy  is  not 
limited  to  finance,  but  is  the  bottom  factor 
in  effort  and  a  condition  of  efficiency. 

The  idea  of  saving  must  not  press  too 
hard  upon  very  young  children,  as  they 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING     255 

cannot  yet  appreciate  the  relations  of 
persons  and  things.  The  practice  of  true 
economy  must  grow  with  the  youth's 
years.  It  is  no  use  to  preach  the  necessi- 
ties of  a  far-off  future  to  young  children. 
Their  experience  is  too  narrow  to  make 
such  admonition  effectual.  Indeed,  a 
young  child  has  no  conscious  business 
with  his  possible  adulthood. 

The  nicer  point  is  to  beget  a  saving 
habit  without  inducing  stinginess  and 
penuriousness — which  is  anti-social  and 
inequitable.  The  method  of  Ewald, 
already  cited,  probably  demonstrates  the 
motive  of  saving  as  well  as  any  method 
can.  The  bottom  idea  is  that  money  is 
only  good  for  what  it  can  bring  in  ex- 
change and  is  valueless  in  itself.  Mere 
hoarding,  therefore,  violates  the  law  of 
justice,  since  it  deprives  society  of  a  use- 
ful Instrument. 

A  contributor  to  the  Kindergarten  Mag- 
azine some  years  ago  gave  his  experience 
in  training  the  economic  sense  in  children. 
After  noting  that  he  believes  in  allow- 


%S6  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

ances  and  in  saving  for  the  sake  of  accu- 
mulating, as  well  as  for  some  definite  pur- 
chase, and  that  he  does  not  believe  in 
paying  children  for  ordinary  domestic 
services,  he  says : 

"Five  years  ago  we  were  boarding,  and 
my  children  were  aged  nine  (boy)  and 
eleven  (girl)  years.  They  had  no  idea 
of  the  money  value  of  anything  except 
candy,  nuts,  cakes,  etc.  I  thought  it 
would  be  well  to  give  them  a  practical 
education  in  this  line,  and  one  day  told 
them  that  I  would  in  the  future  pay  them 
regular  wages  of  $6  per  week;  from  this 
they  should  pay  their  table  board,  $4.50 
per  week,  and  with  the  balance  they 
would  have  to  pay  for  all  their  clothes, 
etc.  We  started  at  Christmas,  and  each 
put  down  in  a  little  book  under  the  head- 
ings **Money  received"  and  **Money 
spent''  the  details  of  the  accounts.  Oc- 
casionally I  would  borrow  from  them  a 
dollar  or  two  for  a  week,  giving  my  note 
and  paying  the  exorbitant  interest  of 
5  per  cent,  a  week  for  it.  Receipts  were 
given  by  the  children  and  demanded  by 
them  for  money  paid  out,  unless  there 
was  a  sales  ticket  to  file.    An  extra  stock 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      257 

of  clothes  made  it  necessary  for  them 
to  borrow  at  times,  and  then  they  gave 
their  notes,  as  I  had  done.  My  boy  when 
less  than  ten  years  old  came  to  me  one 
night  with  Tapa,  how  much  money  do 
you  think  IVe  spent  this  year?'  (He  had 
just  bought  a  suit  and  overcoat  and  had 
little  left.)  I  answered,  *I  don't  know; 
how  much?'  *I've  had  $190,  and  it's  all 
gone  but  $2.23 — it  costs  money,  papa, 
to  live,  don't  it?'  His  sister — a  quiet 
child — learned  the  same  lesson.  We 
would  often  discuss  their  expenditures, 
and  they  learned  the  value  of  clothes, 
etc.,  better  than  they  could  have  done  in 
any  other  way.  Their  mamma,  of 
course,  'shopped'  for  them,  but  they  were 
always  consulted  or  advised. 

**I  simply  told  them  that  a  certain  per- 
centage of  the  money  spent  for  the  fam- 
ily was  theirs,  paid  it  to  them  as  wages. 
Often,  however,  I  gave  them  an  oppor- 
tunity to  do  work  for  me,  such  as  writing 
out  an  article  I  wanted  copied  or  going 
on  an  unusually  long  errand,  for  which 
I  paid  carfare,  which  they  would  save 
by  walking.  The  work  done  for  me  was 
planned  so  it  would  have  to  be  done  dur- 
ing their  usual  play  hours,  and  so  they 


25«  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

would  learn  the  difference  between  work 
and  play. 

'^Neither  of  the  children  are  stingy,  but 
both  know  how  to  spend  money  to  get  the 
most  good  out  of  it,  and  both  have 
money  loaned  at  interest.  They  will 
walk  and  give  the  carfare  to  a  needy  per- 
son or  give  up  some  longed-for  pleasure 
to  aid  one  in  distress.'' 

2'  ^s  to  Spending,  Spending  is  as 
much  an  economic  matter  as  saving. 
Proper  spending  is  proper  saving.  As 
soon  as  a  youth  understands  how  it  may 
be  more  economical  to  spend  $2  than 
to  spend  $1,  he  has  a  grip  on  a  great 
principle. 

Parents  are  liable  to  go  to  one  of  two 
extremes:  They  either  dictate  how 
the  child's  money  shall  be  spent  or  they 
take  no  part  at  all  in  directing  him. 
Many  girls  grow  up  to  be  young  ladies 
without  having  had  a  voice  in  selecting 
their  own  clothes  or  in  otherwise  exer- 
cising a  choice  in  the  purchase  of  their 
necessities.  It  is  better  that  they  should 
make    some    mistakes    than    that    their 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      259 

spending  should  always  be  under  absolute 
dictation. 

This  freedom,  within  limits,  should  be 
accorded  to  young  children  also.  They 
can  be  led  almost  without  knowing  it. 
Their  tastes,  their  wills,  their  judgments, 
are  thus  trained  into  discriminating 
energy. 

A  word  about  the  economy  of  the 
Church.  How  frequently  do  we  see 
looseness  here !  Even  good  business  men 
fall  into  a  happy-go-lucky  way  when  the 
business  is  that  of  Church  finances.  If 
the  Church  should  not  be  a  model  of 
strict  accounting  and  cutting  the  coat  ac- 
cording to  the  cloth,  what  should  ? 

The  Church  ought  to  be  an  example  to 
its  youth  in  all  matters  of  exactness, 
promptness,  regularity,  economic  coordi- 
nation of  agencies,  and  general  manage- 
ment. It  is  often  said  that  it  is  no  part 
of  a  pastor's  work  to  collect  or  appeal 
for  money — the  pastor's  business  being 
spiritual.  But  is  loose  business  manage- 
ment compatible  with  spirituality?     Is 


26o  THE  CULTURE  OF  JUSTICE 

uneconomic  administration  of  other 
people's  money  a  thing  apart  from 
morality  or  spirituality? 

Children  carefully  trained  at  home  are 
sometimes  put  in  moral  jeopardy  when 
they  see  their  church  so  loose-jointed  and 
irresponsible  in  its  ways  and  means  of 
livelihood. 

4.  As  to  Giving.  To  touch  even  lightly 
on  all  phases  of  this  important  subject 
would  not  be  possible  or  even  desirable 
here. 

In  their  laudable  zeal  to  prevent  their 
children  from  becoming  selfish  and  to 
incite  them  to  kindness  and  generosity, 
parents  often  do  damage  to  certain  valu- 
able instincts  and  propensities. 

It  is  not  uncommon  to  so  work  on  a 
child's  feelings  that  he  will  part  with 
some  things  which  it  were  better  for  him 
to  have  kept  for  his  own.  Children  be- 
come attached  to  certain  playthings,  for 
instance,  which  attachment  is  a  form  of 
sentiment  upon  which  much  of  our  higher 
culture  depends.    We  see  that  at  Christ- 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      a6i 

mas  time.  Many  a  parent  knows  that  a 
new  set  of  toys  may  make  a  momentary 
excitement,  after  which  the  child  will 
gravitate  to  an  old,  half-broken  hobby. 

Then  there  is  the  matter  of  giving  away 
discarded  things.  Nice  discernment  is 
needed  here,  for  the  children  themselves 
are  discerning.  A  little  boy  on  being 
advised  to  give  away  some  broken  toys 
to  a  children's  charity  Institution  re- 
plied, "But  how  can  they  use  them  if  I 
can't?"  On  the  other  hand,  a  little  girl 
being  advised  not  to  do  just  that  thing, 
replied,  '*But  the  boys  have  tool  boxes, 
and  they  like  these  broken  things  so  that 
they  can  mend  them."  Enough  to  show 
that  many  things  must  be  taken  into  ac- 
count In  directing  a  child's  giving. 

But  we  are  more  particularly  concerned 
with  money.  How  far  Is  It  advisable  to 
attempt  the  formation  of  the  giving  habit 
in  young  children  who  have  no  money  of 
their  own  to  give?  Would  the  child 
gain  or  lose,  spiritually,  by  waiting  for 
a  certain  period  before  being  permitted 


a62  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

to  contribute  to  the  Sunday-school  mis- 
sionary box? 

The  real  pedagogy  of  this  "giving" 
habit  has  not  pressed  its  way  to  the  front. 
Yet  at  no  point  should  the  home  and  the 
school  be  more  closely  in  accord. 

The  dominant  idea  appears  to  be  that 
the  sooner  a  "penny"can  be  shaken  from 
a  child's  hand  into  the  offertory  plate, 
the  surer  will  be  his  training  in  the  finan- 
cial support  of  the  Lord's  cause. 

Here,  for  instance,  is  the  annual  report 
of  a  flourishing  primary  school.  It  has 
contributed  so  many  dollars  for  mission- 
ary or  benevolent  purposes,  and  of  this 
total  the  **cradle-roir'  babies  have  given 
a  generous  share — "out  of  their  own 
pockets,"  a  waggish  church  officer  re- 
marks. 

The  intention  is  excellent.  It  is  to  form 
and  fix  good  habits  early.  The  general 
proposition  is  good :  Begin  soon  and  stick 
to  it. 

But  this  is  not  all.  A  man  will  not  be  a 
more  liberal  contributor  for  having  first 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      263 

dropped  a  penny  into  a  box  at  three  or  at 
SIX  months  of  age  than  for  having  first 
done  the  same  thing  at  three  or  at  six 
years.  The  reply  may  be  that  while  the 
child  is  not  really  giving  his  own,  or  him- 
self, or  giving  (in  form)  with  any  real- 
isation of  the  meaning  of  the  act,  he  is  at 
least  forming  the  habit. 

I  doubt  it.  He  is  not  forming  the  habit 
of  giving  in  the  same  sense  that  he  is 
forming  the  habit  of  walking.  His  feet 
are  his  own  and  he  is  learning  to  use 
them  for  all  time.  But  the  money  is  not 
his  own,  and  the  habit  of  giving  his 
father's  money  is  not  the  habit  of  giving 
his  own,  or  for  all  time. 

But,  waiving  this  distinction,  it  remains 
true  that  an  act  which  ought  to  be 
thoughtful  may  begin  too  early  to  grow 
into  the  desired  habit.  The  quasi-habit 
of  missionary  benevolence  may  wear  out 
before  the  child  has  arrived  at  the  real 
stage  of  development  when  it  should  be- 
gin. Later  than  the  cradle  age  true  giv- 
ing of  one^s  own   may  begin  with  the 


264  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

effectual  self-initiative  and  so  Inaugurate 
a  genuine  spiritual  habit.  Giving  is  cor- 
relative to  having. 

If  it  be  argued  that  the  primary  child 
(to  say  nothing  of  the  cradle-roll  babe) 
has  some  appreciation  of  joint  mission- 
ary support,  then,  logically,  he  must  be 
conscious  that  he  is  contributing  some  one 
else's  property  and  not  his  own.  Is  this 
good  education? 

But  not  to  push  the  argument  too  far, 
let  us  strain  a  point  favourably  to  the 
common  practice,  and  admit  that  the 
*'penny''  is  called  the  child's  before  he 
gives  it.  The  first  idea  I  wish  to  press  is 
that  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case  the 
practice  must  be  purely  nominal  and 
formal,  if  the  money  has  been  given  to 
the  child  simply  to  transmit  it,  and  would 
not  have  been  given  him  had  not  the 
offertory  been  prescribed  as  Its  only  ad- 
missible end. 

It  Is  questionable  whether  such  an  act 
can  be  the  real  inception  of  a  truly  benev- 
olent attitude   and  habit.      I   am   quite 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      265 

aware  that  a  habit  of  action  will  beget  a 
habit  of  feeling.  Forcing  ourselves  to 
smile  will  help  to  make  us  cheerful  and 
doing  good  deeds  will  make  us  kindly. 
But  how  far  this  is  true  of  the  child  who 
takes  no  initiative  is  at  least  worthy  of 
inquiry. 

The  second  idea  which  I  wish  to  press  is 
more  directly  constructive.  Suppose  the 
children  were  taught  that  giving  is  a 
privilege  as  well  as  a  duty,  and  that  they 
can  come  into  that  privilege  just  as  soon 
as  they  have  something  representing 
their  own  selves — their  personal  energies 
or  their  peculiar  possessions — to  volun- 
teer. Would  not  the  offertory  gain  in 
sanctity  and  meaning?  Do  we  have 
them  come  to  the  communion  before  they 
**discern"?  Is  not  that  a  privilege? 
This  means,  of  course,  the  translation  of 
energies  or  sacrifices  into  money  values 
and  this  part  of  the  pedagogic  will  pri- 
marily fall  upon  the  parent  and  the 
home.  So  the  school  must  oversee  the 
home  in  this  respect. 


a66  THE    CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

I  am  not  prepared  to  advise  the  shut- 
ting off  of  the  primary  offertory  entirely. 
But  I  do  want  to  force  into  prominence 
the  fact  of  its  too  nominal  and  mechani- 
cal nature,  the  possibility  of  a  richer 
spiritual  culture  in  this  field  by  looking 
forward  to  a  day  of  privilege — a  day 
when  the  child  may  enter  the  guild  of 
those  who  truly  give  themselves  in  giv- 
ing of  their  little  substance.  The  ques- 
tion of  the  mere  swelling  of  funds  is  an- 
other story. 

A  writer  in  The  Outlook^  giving  an  ac- 
count of  the  Rev.  Thomas  K.  Beecher, 
says  that  one  of  his  three  rules  for  the 
Sunday-school  was  that  every  pupil 
should  put  something  into  the  collection. 

**Upon  the  latter  point  he  elaborated  at 
some  length.  He  said  it  was  not  the 
money  he  was  most  after,  but  the  habit 
of  responsibility  and  of  bearing  one's 
fair  share  in  all  cooperative  enterprises. 
Therefore,  he  ordained  that  the  contri- 

'  March  lo,  1906. 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING     267 

bution  should  be  at  least  one  cent.  He 
preferred  the  children  to  earn  this  cent  by 
some  little  errand  rather  than  to  ask  their 
father  or  mother  for  it  at  the  last  minute. 
And  when,  through  poverty  or  ill  for- 
tune, a  cent  was  not  obtainable,  the  pupil 
should  cut  out  a  little  piece  of  paper, 
round  like  a  cent.,  write  *'one  cent"  on 
one  side  and  sign  his  name  on  the  other. 
This  perfected  his  status  concerning  the 
contribution,  for  he  knew  that  no  one 
would  avail  himself  of  this  unless  it  was 
necessary." 

Much  of  the  exhortation  and  the  rea- 
soning in  this  matter  appears  to  me  to 
need  thoughtful  scrutiny.  Here,  for  in- 
stance, is  an  extract  from  an  article  by  a 
clergyman  in  a  current  religious  journal : 

'*  Cheerful,  joyful  as  well  as  direct  giv- 
ing IS  so  lofty  a  grace  that  it  has  to  be 
learned.  Cheerful  giving  is  a  real  Chris- 
tian grace,  so  classified,  so  named  one  of 
the  seven  fundamental  means  of  grace. 
(2  Cor.  8:7.)  This  grace  must  be  de- 
veloped, therefore,  as  any  other  grace 


a68  THE   CULTURE   OF  JUSTICE 

must — viz.,  by  the  power  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  operating  upon  the  heart  and  in  the 
heart  through  Christian  culture.  This 
culture  should  be  commenced  in  youth. 
Children  should  be  taught  as  clearly  and 
conscientiously  to  give  unto  the  Lord  as 
to  pray  unto  Him.  Parents  should  teach 
this,  Sunday-schools  should  teach  it,  cate- 
chists  should  teach  it.  It  is  the  truth ;  it 
is  Scriptural  truth;  it  is  St.  Paul's  doc- 
trine; it  is  the  will  of  the  Master.  It  is 
a  law  that  applies  to  all.  If  this  grace 
is  taught  in  youth,  it  will  never  be  lost 
sight  of  as  children  grow  older.  They 
grow  up  to  be  Christian  *givers.' 
(Prov.  22:6.)  As  the  twig  is  bent  so 
will  the  tree  grow." 

Now  note.  There  are  other  ways  of 
giving  to  the  Lord  than  by  simply  trans- 
mitting some  one  else's  money.  But 
suppose  money  were  the  only  acceptable 
gift  to  the  Lord.  Is  praying  to  be  put  on 
the  same  basis  as  money  to  a  moneyless 
child?  Note  again.  *Tf  this  grace  is 
taught  in  youth,  it  will  never  be  lost  sight 
of."  This  is  not  questioned  or  contro- 
verted.    The  point  is  as  to  when  the 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      269 

privilege  of  money-giving  **in  youth''  is 
to  begin.  The  article  just  quoted  makes 
no  distinction  between  a  child  of  three 
and  a  youth  of  thirteen.  It  is  upon  just 
this  distinction  that  I  am  asking  for  care- 
ful thought  from  an  educational,  not  a 
mere  money-gathering,  point  of  view. 

Much  depends  on  where  we  put  the 
main  emphasis.  If  our  moving  desire  is 
to  get  as  much  money  as  possible,  then 
we  need  give  no  further  heed  to  what  I 
have  just  argued. 

If  our  prime  interest  is  the  education  of 
the  child,  then  the  question  becomes  a 
psychological  and  a  pedagogical  one. 

If  the  giving  habit  were  better  installed 
at  ten  years  of  age  than  at  five,  would  we 
be  willing  to  lose  the  money  by  the  aboli- 
tion of  a  mechanical  offertory?  Of 
course  if  the  giving  habit  is  more  surely 
rooted  at  three  than  at  nine,  by  all  means 
begin  it  at  three,  provided  this  advan- 
tage is  not  offset  by  a  false  conception  on 
the  part  of  the  child — that  he  is  giving 
his  own  when  he  owns  nothing  to  give, 


270  THE   CULTURE    OF  JUSTICE 

but  is  transmitting  another's.  We  can- 
not do  better  than  hold  the  question  at 
least  as  an  open  one,  on  both  sides  of 
which  there  is  much  to  be  said,  and  one 
involving  very  important  moral  prin- 
ciples. 

That  giving  can  be  taught  and  wrought 
into  habit  is  beyond  question.  But  the 
essential  thing  in  the  training  is  to  make 
the  habit  discriminating  and  in  a  meas- 
ure systematic.  Yet  it  must  not  be  so 
systematic  as  to  become  mechanical  and 
irresponsive  to  the  appeal  of  the  sym- 
pathies. In  any  case  it  is  essential  that 
we  recognise  and  cultivate  the  sense  of 
possession  or  proprietary  right,  for,  as 
we  have  seen,  this  lies  at  the  root  of  all 
our  charity  and  generosity.  When  it  is 
trained  to  see  beyond  self  to  the  pro- 
prietary rights  of  others,  and  the  com- 
mon good  is  the  dominant  motive,  rights 
and  duties  are  at  one  and  the  conception 
of  justice  has  become  the  rule  of  life. 

Love  moves,  justice  directs.  When 
love  and  justice,  like  rights  and  duties, 


MONEY  AS  MEANS  OF  MORAL  TRAINING      271 

move  together  as  one,  guaranteeing  to 
every  life  its  own  In  the  interest  of  the 
social  whole,  then  shall  we  realise  the 
meaning  of  both  the  Fatherhood  of  God 
and  the  Brotherhood  of  Man.  We  shall 
not  be  less  than  kin,  but  we  shall  be  more 
than  kind. 


INDEX 


Abraham,  48 

Accounts,  children's,  256 

Adjectives  prejudice  child's 
case,   189 

Adolescents  entrusted  with 
money  not  their 
own,  230 

Almshouse  cherished,   128 

Amidon,  Judge,  on  funda- 
mental defect  in 
legal  administration, 
76f 

Anarchy  of   Rousseau,  30 

Anglo-Saxon  sense  of  jus- 
tice, 115 

Annulment  of  own  action 
by   injustice,   123 

Appeal  to  human  justice 
earliest  moral  appeal, 
40 

Aristotle  on  equity,   79 
on  justice,  60 

Attic,  prisoner  in,  175 

Authority,  and  orders,   con- 
flict of,   198 
may  be  immoral,  203 

Beast,   a  just,    105 
Beecher,     Thomas     K.,     on 

Sunday-school  giving, 

266 


Beginning  of  child's  moral- 
ity, 42 

Benevolent        virtues        ndt 
harmless,  21 

Bentham,    Jeremy,    on    fox- 
hunter's  reason,  70 

Berenger  law,  179 

Birney,  Mrs.,  advocates  ac- 
countancy, 240 

Blessings,   do  not  get  more 
than  we  deserve,  122 

Blind  man,  instance  of,  54 

Bodily    power    a    substitute 
for  justice,   220 

Bok,  Edward,  quoted,  102 

Borrowing,  231 

Boy's   comment   on    tourna- 
ment, 93 

Boy  imprisoned  in  attic,  175 

Brent,  Bishop,  on  gambling, 
253 

Brewer,  Justice,  on  justice, 
7off 

Bridge  whist,  251 

Brooks,  Phillips,  on  liberty, 
136 
on  greatness,  31 

Brotherhood,     ground     plan 
of,  86 
rights   and   duties,   mo- 
tifs of,  129 


a74 


INDEX 


Brown,  John,  case  of,  iS2ff 
Brute's  case,  equity  of,  191 
Bucket  and  brush   methods, 

29 
Burritt,   Elihu,   on   injustice 

of  war,  135 
Butler,      Nicholas     Murray, 

quoted,  29 

Cain     and     Abel,     sociology 

of,  42 
Carlyle,   on   injustice,    109 

on  justice,  60 
Cases    not    even    discerned, 

160 

Cato's       question.        Justice 

Brewer's    answer    to, 

73 

Cause  and  effect,  remote,  34 

Charity  and  justice,   29,  56, 

57 
Charity,  Hebraic  idea  of,  56 
rights   of    possession    at 
root  of,    130 
Chamberlain,   quoted,    193 
Child   a    member    of    larger 
whole,   38 
giving    father's    money, 

263 
nature    commanded     by 

obeying  It,   208 
under      conflicting      or- 
ders,   198 
Children's    accounts,    256 

appeal,   3 
Children      not     arbiters     of 
own  conduct,   204 
without  money  of  their 
own  to  give,  261 
China,  stagnation  of,  30 


Christians'  needs,  119 

morality,  sf 
Church     does    not    lead    in 
social   reform,    129 
should    be    a   model    of 

accounting,   259 
statistical   reports,    150 
torturing  the  child,   129 
Civilization,  irony   of,    128 
Cleansing,   29 
Coe,   on  morality,    19 
Combat    an    effort    for    jus- 
tice, 117 
Common  injustice,  types  of, 

I48f 
Conflict    among    Christians, 

20 
Conflict   of  orders,    198 

of  self,   32 
Contract,    child    should    not 
sign  a,  240 
of  Eden,  41 
Consecration      not     discern- 
ment, 25 
Corporal  punishment  almost 
sure  to  be  unfair,  215 
a  failure,  218 
as  a  method,  218 
does  not  educate,  219 
easy  to  administer  sud- 
denly   and    excitedly, 
219 
hinders  reformation,  211 
historical  argument 

against,  221 
self-perpetuating      insti- 
tution, 219 
tendency  of,  212 
what    it    will    and    will 
not  do,  21$ 


INDEX 


175 


Court    incident,    i4of 

Courts    producers   of    crimi- 
nals, 85 

Criminals       score       against 
environment,     125 
sense    of    Justice    never 
obliterated,    no 

Criticism  among   Christians, 
20,  22 

Culture  of  justice,  5 

Danger  of  stinginess,  240 
Dangers     of     hope     to     get 
something     for    noth- 
ing, 24s 
Danton,  90,  92,   118 
Dead,   the,  justice  to,   137 
Decalogue,  last  six  items  of, 

131 
Decline    of    bodily    torture, 

222 
Definition      of      justice      in 

lowest  terms,    89 
Definitions  of  justice,    59ff 
Delinquency,      contributory, 

177 
Demosthenes,  48,  60 

on  justice,  60 
Depredation,  incident  of,  169 
Desire  to  be  thought  right, 

universal,    9 1 
Dewey's    experiment,    96 
Dickens      against      corporal 

punishment,    224 
Direct  aid,   133 
Disobedience,    Eden    not    a 

case  of,  41 
Disraeli  on  justice,  60 
Divine   possession,    interfer- 
ence with,  41 


Dreyfus  saved  through  jus- 
tice, 5of 

Duties  of  imperfect  obliga- 
tion, 46 

Duty  to  man  and  God,  6 

Earning  money,  233 

Ecclesiastical  formalism, 

case  of,  152 

Economic  action,  love  in,  86 

Economy  of  church,   259 

Eden,    not    a   case    of   mere 
disobedience,  41 
trespass  the  root  sin  of, 
132 

Editors  not  infallible,   149 

Eliot's  comment  on  boys, 
94 

Equity,  77ff 

Errancy   and   justice,   59 

Ethical  habit  of  mind,  lack 
of,   25 
philosophising    not  pro- 
ductive of   moral  liv- 
ing, 6 
spine  wanting         in 

church,  151 

Every  parent  a  contribu- 
tory  delinquent,    177 

Ewald,  method  of,  255 
plan  of,  241 

Executions  under  Henry 
VIII,  223 

Fairbrother,    Mr.,    case    of, 

165 
Fairness,    sense    of,    among 

criminals,    114 
Fair  play  the  first  morality, 

39 


*76 


INDEX 


Faith  and  love,  insuf- 
ficiency of,   2^ 

Family  an  energising  force, 
14 

Formative  justice  begins  in, 
145 
Gladden  on,   14 

Field,  Justice,  on  justice, 
59 

Filipino  sense  of  justice, 
115 

Finite  nature,  limitations 
of,  73 

First  motive  of  good  citi- 
zens,  145 

Flynt  and  Walton's  story 
of  two  criminals,   113 

Foreign  mission  as  social 
settlement,  29 

Forgery,    criminal,    1 1 1 

Formative    agency     for    de- 
velopment     of      indi- 
vidual, 8 
justice     must    begin    in 
family,    145 

Fox,  George,  refused  to  ac- 
cept pardon  for  jus- 
tice, 106 

Freedom,      child      struggles 
for,  37 
voice  of,  134 

French  pessimism,  28 

Froebel's  aim,  38 

Gambler  not  a  producer,  244 
Gambling    defined,    246 

spirit  in  England,  246 
Generosity      dependent      on 

possession,    130 
Giving,  260 


Gladden,     on     responsibility 

of  family,  14 
Golden    Rule    does    not    tell 

how,  32 
Goodness  of  God,  20 
Gospel     of     Christ,     social, 

121 
of  John,  83 
Grace    the     divine     attitude 

toward  universe,  64 
Guilty  person    he    who   pro- 
duces    the     darkness, 

10 
Gulick    on    foreign    mission 

as    social    settlement, 

28f 

Habit  of  mind,  25,  160 
lack   of   ethical,    25 
Hallam,   on  justice   of  com- 
bat   in    middle    ages, 
117 
Hands  of  child  tied,  37 
Harris,  W.  T.,  on  justice,  63 

quoted,  63,   224 
Havergal's  hymn,  23 
Hay,  Secretary,  quoted,  70 
Heaven,  kingdom  of,  a  cor- 
porate idea,   121 
Henry  I,  80,  133 
codes  of,  80 
Heresy  trials  unjust,  150 
Hippie's    conception    of    re- 
ligion, 18 
Hobson,  John,  quoted,  249 
Home  attitude  must  be  fair, 

145 
Homely  acts  of  justice,  146 
Honor,  basis   of  ethical  in- 
struction, so 


INDEX 


277 


Human    brotherhood    a    re- 
vived   sentiment,    134 
justice,  40;  errs,  59 
relations       and       moral 

sense,   93 
terms    inadequate    when 
applied  to  God,  65 
Humility    not    the     founda- 
tion virtue,  49 
Hugo,   Victor,  Bishop's  jus- 
tice  in   **Les   Misera- 
bles,**    67 
on  guilt,   10 
Hypocrisy,  21 

Idea  acts  as  it  is  felt,  113 

Immorality    of    mere    piety, 

26 

of  uselessness,  24 

Immortality,  Justice    Brewer 

on,  74 
Imperfect  obligation,   duties 

of,  46,  51 
Inclusive  attitude,   189 
Indeterminate  sentence, 

222 
Injustice    annuls    our     own 
action,   123 
gag  of,  99 

to      childhood      rankles 
through   manhood,  47 
weakens  loyalty,  205 
why    so    much    in    the 
world,  118 
Insane,  treatment  of,  225 
Insufficiency    of    faith    and 

love,   27 
Interference      with      divine 
possession,  41 


Japanese     success     in     war, 

206 
Jennie  and  her   cat,   191 
Jewish  charity  box,  56 
Judgment  and  justice,  48 

Moulton  on,  56 

Judgments,  thoughtless,    160 

Justice,  absolute,  a  thing  of 

infinite  mind,  7oflF,  139 

and  judgment,  48,  56 

and     injustice,     Carlyle 

on,    109 
as  a  signature,  46f 
as  habit  of  thought,  13 
as  a   guarantee,  88 
a  thorough  virtue,  54 
a  view  of  the  world,  87 
by   combat,    117 
charity  of,  29 
criticised,    122 
defined  in  lowest  terms, 

89 
earliest     moral     appeal, 

40,   115 
equity,  fairness,  as  syn- 
onyms, 88 
essentially  economic,  254 
essential     to     full     effi- 
ciency,   120 
etymology  of,  83 
false  views  of,   122 
felt  meaning  of,  53 
impossible      to      mental 

indolence,    12 
inadequacy   of    felt   sig- 
nificance   of,    58 
in  the    family,    13 
is  teleological,  86 
Justinian  on,  62 
liberty,  peace,  one,    134 


278 


INDEX 


Justice  locates  real  evil,  140 

love,  121 

matter    of   human    rela- 
tions, 9 

moral-social   specific,   7 

must  be  taught  by  jus- 
tice,  156 

never  extinguished,   45, 
92 

not     mere     legality     or 
court  procedure,  81 

Sanction  of,  28 

seems    weaker   in   wom- 
en,  116 

to  child  a  mode  of  edu- 
cation,   145 

to  the  dead,  137 

synonyms  of,  83 

the  earliest   moral    feel- 
ing to  develop,  40,  115 

what   it  does,    138 
Justinian  on  justice,  62 

Karnes,  on  injustice  of 
common  law,  75 

Kant,  45,  63,  95 

Killing  with  a  house,  42 

Kindergarten  child  spilling 
beads,  36 

Kindness,  an  imperfect  ob- 
ligation,  46 

Kindness  without  justice,  45 

Kingdom  of  God  a  cor- 
porate idea,  31 

Kupfer,  on  juvenile  court, 
84 

Legal  procedure  con- 
founded with  justice, 
81 


Liberty    defined    by    Bishop 

Brooks,    136 
Life,  beginning  of,  place  to 

begin  ideal  life,   138 
Lindsey,   Judge,   The  Arena 
on,    184 
first  to  send  a  father  to 

jail,  178 
finds    little     criminiality 

among  children,  85 
justice    in    his    juvenile 

court,    75f 
takes   boys    to   his   own 

hdme,   179 
way    of,    75,    85,     178, 
179,   180,  184 
London       Spectator,       case 

from,   100 
Love      and      faith,      insuffi- 
ciency of,  27 
Love     needs    enlightenment 
and  training,  21,  35 
needs  wisdom,  21,  35 
not  a  method,  12 
to  God  and  usefulness, 

24 
unlovely,    4,   44 
Love*s  obligation  to  become 
learned     and    expert, 
21,   35 
regulator,  4,  45 
Lord's      Prayer      a      social 

prayer,    121,   132 
Loyalty    better    than    blind 

obedience,   204 
Lucerne,  museum  at,   135 
Luther,  quoted,  82 

MacDonald,    cases    reported 
by,  106 


INDEX 


279 


MacDonald  says  criminal 
thinks  right  rather 
than  feels  right,  112 
on  thieves  and  bank- 
rupts,   112 

Mackenzie,   on  betting,  249 

Man  the  predatory  animal, 
197 

Matheson,      on      obedience, 

40,  201 
interpretation    of    story 

of  Eden,  40,  201 
Matured,    no    one    properly, 

127 
Meaning    of    Jewish     word 

Zedakah,    56 
Mechanical     obedience     per- 
mits no  sense  of  pos- 
session,  195 
Mental  activities  of  justice, 

12 
Mercy   contrasted   with  jus- 
tice, 66f 
function  of,   78 
Tennyson  on,   66 
what  it  is,  87 
Young  on,  66 
Method  for    child   for  earn- 
ing money,   234 
need  of,  20 
Meum    and    tuum,    37,    39, 

41,  202 

Middle     Ages,     combat     in, 

117 
standards  those   of  our 

time,   168 
Mine    and    yours,    rule    of, 

37f  39.  41,  202 
Mint  thief,  109 
Misconception  of  justice,  7 


Misery  not  rooted  in  slums, 
127 

Modern   philanthropy,    s6f 

Money    as    means   of    train- 
ing to  moral  uses,  228 
won  by  chancing,  244 

Moral  discrimination,  need 
of  more  exact,  5,  6, 
19,   T19 

Moral  living  not  produced 
by  ethical  philos- 
ophising,  6,  28 

Moral-social  specific,   7 

Moralists  not  necessarily 
moral,  6,  28 

Morality  and  justice,  one- 
ness of,  39 

Morality,        beginning       of 
child's,  42 
of    Christians,    15 
mere,   19,  119 
not  in  things  but  in  re- 
lations, 98 

Morrison,   108 

on  criminals,  68 

Moulton  on  judgment,  56 

Motive  of  boys  helping 
blind  man,  55 

Mozley,  Canon,  act  of  thief 
on  cross  a  surprise,  142 

Need  of  punishment  re- 
duced, 210 

Neglect  of  outfit  for  social 
life,  25 

Obedience  not  a   virtue  per 
se,  199 
not     beginning    of 
child's  morality,  42 


a8o 


INDEX 


Obedience  to  God  is  per  se 
a  duty,  200 

Obedient  and  rebellious  at 
same  moment,  203 

Obligation,      duties     of     in- 
definite or  imperfect, 
46,    51 
to  man  and  God,  6 

Offences  in  England  for- 
merly subject  to  cap- 
ital  punishment,    222 

Opinions  of  children,   lof 

Orthodoxy  intolerant  of 
morality,    18 

Parents  paying  children  for 
service,   233 
why   they   punish,   211 

Parker,  Jane  Marsh,  on 
child  training  by 
bookkeeping,     228 

Parker,  Theodore,  on  jus- 
tice, 59 

Parkhurst  controverted,  204 
on       corporal       punish- 
ment, 213 

Paraphrase  of  opponent's 
views,   188 

Passion  for  special  privi- 
lege, 250 

Peculations  arise  from 
hands   untrained,   229 

Penal  institutions  produc- 
ers of  criminals,    85 

Penal  laws,  inefficiency  of, 
69 

Personality  developing  the 
center  of  activity, 
129 

Pessimism,   French,   28 


Philippian  gaoler,  case  of, 
136 

Philanthropies  manned  by 
professing  Christians, 
152 

Philanthropy  preventive  as 
justice,   125 

Phillips,  Wendell,  on  jus- 
tice, 60 

Picture,  justice  of,  47 

Piety,  immorality  of  mere, 
26 

Pivotal  morality  and  tap 
root  of  justice,  48 

Plato  on  justice,  60 

Plumbline,   case  of,   162 

Policeman  in  court,   143 

Pollok's  course  of  time,   117 

Porto  Rican  sense  of  jus- 
tice,  115 

Possession,  rights  of,  lie  at 
root  of  charity  and 
generosity,   130 

Powers    not    ignored,    34 
trustees   of,  27 

Premier,  where  to  find  this, 
44 

Principals*  Association  of 
New  York,   215 

Prison  cherished,  128 

Prizes,  251 

Professionalism,  a  bar  to 
progress,   150 

Property  rights  of  child, 
36,  62 

Property,  trustees  not 
alone  of,  2y 

Proprietary    right     of    indi- 
vidual, 62    , 
sense,  37,  61 


INDEX 


2^1 


Psalmist,  48 

Punish,  why  parents,  211 

Punishment,  corporal,  211, 
215,  218,  219,  221 

Punishment  done  in  love,  12 
justice    used     as    syno- 
nym for,  82 
not      a       gfeat      moral 

specific,   210 
purpose   in,   210 

Qualification  of  justice  as 
premier,  44 

Racial  and  social  feelings, 
113 

Reform,   delusive,    120 

Reporter's  account,  82 

Right  a  universal  standard, 
91,   117 

Rights  and  duties  simul- 
taneous; motif  of 
brotherhood,    129 

Rights  spring  from  pro- 
prietary sense,   38 

Riis,   Jacob,   on   charity  and 
justice,   57 
on  killing  with  a  house, 
42 

Roman  law,   79 

Rousseau,   anarchy  of,   30 

Royce  quoted,  45 

Rugby  boy's  letter,   105 

Ruskin,  45,  57,  62 

on   charity   and   justice, 
57»  62 

Rye,  Miss,  on  child  of 
burglars,  95 

Safeguarding  the  dead,   137 


Sanction  of  justice,  28 

Saving,  254 

Schoolroom  incident,   i54f 
injustice,    98 

Searching  question,  134 

Self-collision,    instances    of, 
32,   123 

Self-preservation,    37,   39 

Severity,  not  a  guarantee  of 
reformation,    222 

Severest    penalty     not    best 
deterrent,   223 

Sex,     no    difference    caused 
by,   116 

Significance    of    word    "jus- 
tice," 81 

Sin,  so-called,  not  sin,  91 

Snap  judgments,   156 

Social  life,  outfit  for,  25 
order    cannot    rest     on 

injustice,    123 
reform,      Church      does 

not  lead  in,   129 
self-preservation,    39 
settlement    idea   in    for- 
eign missions,  29 

Society,      collision     of,     32, 
123 

Sophistry       of       Christians, 
129 

Spending,   258 

Square    deal,    first   morality, 
39 

Stagnation  of  China,   30 

Story,  Justice,   quoted,  78 

Struggle    of    child    to    free 
tied  hands,  37 

Stubbs,  quoted,  133 

Student's  testimony,  96 

Swedenborg,  quoted,   24 


282 


INDEX 


Taft,     Judge,     decision     of, 
115 
on  justice,  ^6 
Technique     of     bench      and 

bar,  Tj,  79,  80 
Tendency    of   corporal   pun- 
ishment,   212 
Tennyson,  on  mercy,  66 
Testimony,  various,    121 
Thief   on    cross    a    surprise, 

142 
Thinking  justice,  86,   155 
Torture,  decline  of,  222 
Townsend,      Meredith,      on 

justice  in  Asia,   116 
Trespass    in    modern    crimi- 
nology, 43,   132 
the    root    sin    of    Eden, 
132 
Trumbull,  case  of,  171 
Trustees     of    property    and 
powers,  2^ 

Unjust     man     annuls     own 

action,  63 
Use   of    "luck"    and    "bet," 

250 
Uselessness  immoral,  24 

Vagrancy,  43 
Vagrant  hands,  43 


Vice,   children   unaware   of, 

108 
Vices,  1 08,  249 
Victoria  quoted,  190 
Violation     of     instinct      of 

justice,    155 

War,  abhorrence  of,   221 

War   and   peace  museum   at 
Lucerne,   135 

Webster's,      Daniel,     defini- 
tion of  justice,  47,  60 

Wisdom,  need   of  love,  for, 
35 
not    guaranteed    by    be- 
ing a  Christian,  21 

Women,  sense  of  justice  in, 
116 

Woolsey,        President,       on 
basis     of     generosity, 
130 
on  surrender  of  rights, 
130 

Young,  on  mercy,  66 
Youth,  spoliation  of,  127 

Zedakah,   justice-charity,    56 
Zola  quoted,  51 

letter       to      Madame 
Dreyfus,  losf 


'       ^     OF  THE  ^ 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


University  of  California  Library 
or  to  the 

JRARY  FArii  iTv 


'  v-'     f      ^  V^ 


,V.*' 


i  LA^  Q  0 


6l 


l7JnQo 


